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MUSEUM IDEALS 


OF PURPOSE AND METHOD 


~* 





MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON 





MUSEUM IDEALS 


OF PURPOSE AND METHOD 


BY 
BENJAMIN IVES GILMAN 





PRINTED BY ORDER OF 
THE TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM 
AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 
CAMBRIDGE 
1918 





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COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY MUSEUM 


OF FINE ARTS, 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _ 


; Published January 1918 





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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON 


Mr. Benjamin Ives Gilman, the author of “Museum 
Ideals of Purpose and Method,” has long held the office 
of Secretary of this Museum. In recognition of Mr. Gil- 
man’s mature thought upon the theory and practice of 
museum administration, the Trustees are very glad to 
authorize the inclusion of the book among Museum pub- 
lications. 

October, 1917. 


fi Ke O' é> 
age ed wD 


- 








TO THE MEMORY OF 

SAMUEL DENNIS WARREN 

JANUARY 25 1852—FEBRUARY 19 1910 
PRESIDENT OF THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 
1901-1906 
MOVING SPIRIT IN THE PROJECT 
FOR ITS PRESENT BUILDING 
BOLD LEADER ACUTE COUNSELLOR 
FAITHFUL FRIEND 


“gb, 





PREFACE 


Tue writer desires to acknowledge with gratitude the 
kindness of the Trustees of the Museum which he serves 
in authorizing the inclusion of this book among Museum 
publications. 

At a recent meeting of the American Astronomical 
Society Professor Edward C. Pickering is reported as say- 
ing: ““A great deal has been done by wealthy men in pro- 
viding equipment and plants for the study of astronomy, 
but the important thing for the future is to use money 
for the increasing of efficiency and obtaining results. We 
have enough plants, we now want greater results.” A 
similar situation at the moment confronts museums in 
America. Wealthy men have done a great deal in pro- 
viding collections and buildings to house them; but the 
important thing for the future is to use money for increas- 
ing the efficiency of these acquisitions, and obtaining re- 
sults from them. Growth has been the paramount care 
hitherto of our museums. The use of growth needs to 
become their paramount care instead. 

As a matter of convenience collections of science, and 
collections of art are alike called museums. Yet it may 
be claimed both that collections of art have a better right 
to the title, and that a radical difference between them 
calls for the independent naming of collections of science. 
Although there were no muses of painting or sculpture, 
it was the realm of fancy over which the sisters presided, 
and not the domain of fact. Moreover, as exhibits, ob- 
jects of art serve a purpose for which they were intended, 
and objects of science a purpose for which they were not 


x PREFACE 


— the purpose, namely, of being inspected by beholders. 
Objects of art were made to be looked at, and looked at 
they are accordingly. Objects of science were not made 
to be looked at, and looked at they are, nevertheless. The 
scientific collection, as the less natural type of exhibi- 
tion, calls for an independent name. But in default of 
any convenient term, we shall doubtless continue to use 
the phrase “‘museum of science” in spite of its contra- 
diction, and “‘museum of art”’ in spite of its redundancy. 

For an intelligent decision as to the use of growth in 
museums etymologically so-called, or public collections 
of fine art, we should know, first, what are the results at 
which these institutions aim, and, second, how such re- 
sults may most effectively be obtained. The present book 
is a contribution toward replies to these two questions: 
first, regarding museum purposes; second, regarding mu- 
seum methods. 

The editor of the Burlington Magazine, in an article on 
‘“‘Museums”’ in the issue for September 15, 1908, wrote: 
“The time has arrived when the question of exactly what 
their function is, and what it ought to be, must be asked 
and solved. Boston must have the honor of having been 
the first place where this question has attracted serious 
attention; and where in the building of the new museum 
it is understood that a new solution of the problem is to 
be exemplified.” Boston may accept this testimony with 
due humility, and may rejoice that in its present museum 
building the solution which the Burlington states and 
commends as the “esthetic ideal” has been permanently 
expressed in granite and marble. With its piano nobile de- 
voted to exhibition, and its basement set apart for study, 
the structure proclaims that the controlling purpose of 
a museum of art is esthetic, its subordinate purpose sci- 
entific. In pursuance of the expressed aim of Samuel 


x 


PREFACE xl 


Dennis Warren, then President of the Museum, to make 
it “possible for all who would to work together toward 
a common end,” all four methods known to inquiry were 
utilized in reaching a museum scheme embodying this 
fundamental principle: experience, derived from a gen- 
eration of museum work, experiment, in a specially 
constructed building, observation, by a commission trav- 
elling in Europe, and study, devoted to the existing litera- 
ture of museum planning. It is in Boston again that the 
eesthetic ideal has first received explicit official statement. 
The Annual Report for 1916 of Mr. Morris Gray, Presi- 
dent of the Museum, sets a milestone in the history of 
the management of museums of art by its definite recog- 
nition that the duty of providing for the proper enjoy- 
ment of their acquisitions is their fundamental duty and 
now the pressing one. Time has fully verified the assump- 
tion of the founders of the Museum “that the Museum 
is to be what its name expresses, a Museum of the Fine 
Arts; that its primary object is to collect and exhibit the 
best obtainable works of genius and skill; that the appli- 
cation of the fine arts to industry and the illustration of 
the fine arts by archeology are both within its province, 
but that neither of these is its first object.” ! 

The first section of this book presents a reasoned plea 
from various angles in support of the esthetic ideal, under 
the title of the Ideal of Culture. It is argued that a museum 
of art is primarily an institution of culture and only sec- 
ondarily a seat of learning. | 

The identity of culture with artistic enjoyment is by 
no means an accepted commonplace among us; nor is the 
distinction between culture and education by any means 
clearly drawn by all of those who use the words. It is here 


1 Bighth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
(1883), p. 12.. 


xii PREFACE 


assumed that culture consists at bottom in the spiritual 
process of liking things that other people before us have 
made to their liking, whether these things are habits of 
speech or behavior, political institutions, or the things 
we narrowly call works of fine art. More closely defined, 
in harmony with modern usage, culture means sharing 
in such likings as have an authoritative basis of one kind 
or another, and are thus representatives of what we call 
standards of taste. According to this definition culture and 
education differ doubly. Culture is an affair of the feel- 
ings, of what are called the “ sensibilities.” Education may 
train the sensibilities, but it may also train other capaci- 
ties, bodily or mental. Moreover, the sensibilities without 
training are often capable of the sympathetic response 
we call culture. While the scope of education extends 
beyond culture, culture is in a measure independent of 
education. Not all education is cultivating, and not all 
culture is educated. Each term in its way covers more 
than the other. 

Among opportunities of celine of liking things that 
others have made to their liking, works of fine art are 
preéminent. We are indeed pardonable in naming them 
alone. A museum is an institution devoted to preserving 
certain of these works which are still likable, although 
not usable as they once were. The ideal of museum pur- 
pose here called that of culture affirms that such institu- 
tions ought to offer their contents primarily for the exer- 
cise of the likings they illustrate, or less abstractly, for 
the enjoyment of their beauty. 

This is an ideal at once true and needing to be preached 
among us. It is true, because a museum object is apt to 
be more valuable as an opportunity of enjoyment than 
for any other purpose. Bemg among the things that 
others have made to their liking, when we like it in turn, 


PREFACE xiii 


we aid it to accomplish that one of its native purposes 
which it can still subserve in its new surroundings; and 
anything is apt to be more valuable for a purpose for 
which it was made than for any other. Thus a museum 
of fine art which regards and treats its acquisitions as 
primarily things to be enjoyed, opportunities of culture, 
gives their chief present value the chief place, as it should. 

Further, the ideal of culture needs to be preached 
among us. A generation ago an American writer of dis- 
tinction, speaking of our elaborately instructed classes, 
called their culture “‘a hollow mockery.” This was, and 
is still, a fact in the sense that, just as no one could pos- 
sibly be so wise as Lord Thurlow looked, so no one could 
possibly be as cultivated as some people among us are 
supposed to be. The literature, the music, painting and 
sculpture, the institutions, the customs, the manners, 
which even the most favorably placed and receptive be- 
holder can ever come to like as their creators liked them, 
make up a comparatively small aggregate for each indi- 
vidual. In defiance of this personal limit it is the effort 
of our higher instruction to accomplish a more or less 
complete humanization of every one subjected to it. 
What it aims at is a broad culture — the reawakening 
of at least the standard enthusiasms of the race in every 
new student. What it accomplishes is at best to expose him 
to sources of inspiration many of which he is incapable 
of responding to except mechanically. Hence among our 
elaborately instructed classes an abundant growth of 
hollow mockeries of culture. Hence an intellectual snob- 
bery which, instead of actually hking things, likes only 
to seem to like them. Hence among the population gen- 
erally an almost total ignorance of what culture really is, 
and a well-nigh universal identification of it either with 
the factitious enthusiasms which are the most conspicu- 


XIV PREFACE 


ous product of an instruction that aims at it, or with this 
instruction itself. Against these popular delusions mu- 
seums of fine art, as conservators of some of the chief 
instrumentalities of culture, are called to fight. In a land 
which has hardly yet begun to endow music and the 
drama, they are almost the sole foundations representa- 
tive of culture as distinguished from education; and need 
to assert themselves as such. In our larger communities 
especially, from the beginning homes of the higher instruc- 
tion, the doctrine that enjoyment is the chief aim of 
museums of art, instruction a secondary aim, needs to 
be preached as this book seeks to preach it. 

The painter Fromentin once wrote: “Le temps ne re- 
specte pas ce qu’on a fait sans lur.”” “'Time does not respect 
what is done without his aid.”” This book has been writ- 
ten during intervals of reflection upon a busy official 
career and has occupied eighteen years in the writing. 
Time having been conciliated so far, may perhaps respect 
it until its conclusions have been fairly and widely 
weighed. This is not so modest a hope as it sounds. 
Fairly to weigh any new doctrines means to assimilate their 
element of truth and to reject their element of error. 
As William James noted, we assimilate new truth in three 
steps. We are first inclined to say, “It is absurd”’; then, 
“Tt is sensible but not novel’’; and finally, “I have long 
thought so myself.” When this third stage is reached, 
and not before, a truth has been assimilated and is ready 
to issue in action. Joubert wrote, “No one knows any- 
thing well unless he has known it a long time”;! and 
Holmes, “‘knowledge and timber should n’t be used much 
until they are seasoned.” 2 The hope that the seven ideals 
of this book will be fairly and widely weighed — the ele- 
ment of truth in them domesticated and seasoned in our 

1 Pensées. 2 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 


PREFACE XV 


minds — before the volume is forgotten, is an ambitious 
hope rather than a modest one. If the ideal of Culture, 
though true, still needs to be preached among us, no little 
time must elapse before it will become a part of the gen- 
eral museum consciousness. Grave practical difficulties, 
moreover, oppose the acceptance of what truth there 
may be in the six ideals of method here based upon the 
cultural ideal of purpose. Our museum buildings now 
generally employ either top or side light. The prevailing 
type presents a combination of skylights and blank walls. 
They are mostly also constructed or planned in hollow 
squares. Most of them admit of remodelling to give 
Diagonal Lighting in part or wholly; and the future 
schemes of many could be changed to give Radial Expan- 
ston, to give enveloping gardens instead of enveloped 
courts; but at what a cost of enthusiastic conviction and 
of money in both instances! Not in a generation of dis- 
cussion and experiment could the museum world reach 
a final opinion on a break with tradition so complete and 
so costly. The ideal of Restful Inspection condemns the 
greater part of the show-cases now existing in the greater 
part of our museums — an equipment costing many hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars, and still good for many 
years use. However true it may be that these fixtures 
are radically inefficient and urgently need to be replaced 
by forms like those here advocated, the conviction can 
spread only very slowly against an immense mental inertia 
and a partiality tenaciously rooted in habit. The ideals of 
Oficial Companionship and the Interpretatiwe Catalogue 
must await a generation with the ability and the freedom 
to give the one and write the other: hardly the genera- 
tion now rising, though possibly the next following. We 
are at present only in our first rude attempts at realizing 
~~ either ideal, and are learning mostly by our mistakes. 


XVI PREFACE 


That a museum of art must have evegetes or official inter- 
preters, as Furtwiingler ' predicted years ago, seems self- 
evident. But they must be critics, not teachers, expo- 
nents of culture, not representatives of education; and 
the class hardly exists among us. Critic means censor 
only by perversion. In the valuable sense, a critic is 
one who has begun to understand a work of art and who 
seeks to lead others to its understanding. In this sense 
the museum is the home of the critic of tangible art, as the 
laboratory is the home of the scientist, the library of the 
scholar, the court of the lawyer, the church of the preacher. 
Doubtless one day a visitor to every museum of art may 
count in advance, if he so desire, upon some serious intro- 
duction to the spirit of its contents, neither arid nor gush- 
ing, either by the spoken or the written word of a critic 
in its service. Doubtless also this will be a distant day. 
The ideal of Composite Boards is the museum application 
of the general principle that any organized effort is most 
successful when the varied skills it engages are given their 
representation in the body that ultimately controls it. 
In other fields this principle is already frequently applied 
in practice. The granting of votes to women, the ad- 
mission of employees as stockholders in the corporations 
they serve, the movement giving the faculties of colleges 
a share in their management, are unmistakable signs that 
the future, however far away, belongs to the composite 
ideal. In the special field of museum administration there 
have already been instances in which the head of the 
working staff and others similarly active have been in- 
cluded in the corporation. Gradually doubtless, but 
doubtless only. very gradually, there will be more such 
instances. Writing about 1830, Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 
predicted that he would not be read to good purpose until 


1 Ueber Kunstsammlungen aus alter und neuer Zeit. (Munich, 1899.) 


PREFACE XVii 


about 1880, a prophecy which foretold almost to a year 
the time of the greatest vogue of his novels and essays. 
Perhaps 1960 might be named as a possible date when 
the seven ideals of this book — if they have not mean- 
while been forgotten — will have been widely and fairly 
weighed. 

But may not museums of art as we now know them be- 
come themselves an obsolete type of institution in this 
interim? At a time and in a land where the “phono- 
graphic church” is seriously proposed, it is impossible to 
deny that some other way of doing justice to our tangible 
artistic heritage than its permanent public exhibition may 
be invented. There are already not wanting the most 
serious criticisms of the whole conception of the modern 
museum. The naturalist J. G. Wood writes, ““To the 
general public a museum of whatever nature is most in- 
tolerably dull.”’! The lively German writer Julius Lang- 
bebhn describes a museum of art as a place “where every 
separate object kills every other and all of them to- 
gether the visitor.’? Robert de la Sizeranne inveighs 
against them as prisons of art, an indictment often 
echoed.* A remark of M. Anatole France represents the 
utmost that can be ‘said in their disparagement: “Since 
by a universal law life feeds on life, the Sicilian peasant 
who builds his hut from the débris of a Greek temple is 
more a philosopher than all the curators of museums.”’ 4 
Against these biting verdicts may be set the recent judg- 
ment of a literary jury that a poem inspired by a mu- 
seum object — Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” — is 
the most perfect in the English tongue. The salvage of 


1 Nineteenth Century (1887), p. 384. 

2 Rembrandt als Erzieher (Leipzig, 1890), p. 17. 

8 “Les Prisons d’Art,”’ Revue des deux Mondes (1899), p. 114 f. The critic 
T. Thoré had many years before called them “cemeteries of art.’’ Salons de 
W. Burger. (Paris, 1870.) Salon de 1861, p. 83. 

4 Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. 


XVI PREFACE 


this particular vase was well worth the cost of the col-_ 
lection it adorned. For the future we can at least affirm 
that some form of institution will persist which will con- 
tinue to bear the testimony which our museums now bear 
to the truth that beauty is of longer life than utility. The 
inevitable vicissitudes of things will see to it that myriads 
of artistic achievements of every tangible kind will cease 
to hold their place in life and if not lost will need to be 
conserved in places set apart. William Morris casts up 
the account for and against museums in a paragraph: 
“Certainly any of us who may have any natural turn 
for art must get more help from frequenting them than 
one can well say. It is true, however, that people need 
some preliminary instruction before they can get all the 
good possible to be got from the prodigious treasures pos- 
sessed by the country in that form; there also one sees 
things in a piecemeal way; nor can I deny that there is 
something melancholy about a museum, such a tale of 
violence, destruction, and carelessness as its treasured 
scraps tell us.”’! With this summary we curators may 
be content. Museums are in truth the treasure-houses 
they are vaunted to be, delicate and difficult as is the 
task of putting into people’s hands the keys to these 
treasures, and sadly imperfect surrogates as are museum 
conditions for the vanished worlds in which the treasures 
once actually lived. 

The value of such treasures is as inadequately gauged 
by the time we spend in looking at them, as the value of 
poem and story by the time we spend in reading them. 
The admirer of Michel Angelo or the Venetians finds a 
new impressiveness in real human presences, the afternoon 
has new charms for the lover of Claude Lorraine, mythol- 
ogy new delights for the friend of Poussin or Bécklin. 

1 Hopes and Fears for Art, p. 21. 


PREFACE XIX 


Likewise the nights and days have a new radiance for 
the student of Dante, the Alps and the ocean new won- 
ders for the intimate of Byron and Swinburne, London 
and the Thames new fascinations for the familiar of 
Dickens. Writing of a calm at sea, Bullen in his Cruzse 
of the Cachalot describes it as “such a calm as one real- 
izes when one reads sympathetically that magical piece 
of work ‘The Ancient Mariner.’ ”’ So largely is the world 
what the artists make of it for us. 


CONTENTS 


PART I. PURPOSE 


I. On tHE NATURE AND Puace or Fine Arv 


Fine Art and Beauty. Gift and Craft. Matter and Form. Process 
and Product. Art for Art’s Sake. Beauty and Divinity. 


Il. Poputar Epvucation In Fine Art 


Education. Fine Art. Education in Fine Art. Popular Education 


in Fi rt. Culture. 


Ill. Tae Arms or\ Museums. THE IDEAL or CULTURE 


I. Dr. GoopE’s THESIS AND ITS ANTITHESIS 


Il. Tae Trrete Arm or Museums or Fine Art 


III. On, THE DIstTINcTIVE PurPosE or Museums or ART 
es 
TV. Tue Dipactic Bras In Museum MANAGEMENT 


V. CoNNOISSEUR AND DILETTANTE: A MEDITATION ON SKIM- 


MING SUGAR WITH A WARMING-PAN 


PART II. METHOD 


Wepeerrwtee lO lw 


On CoLLECTING FoR MUSsEUMs. ‘ 


Il. Construction. THe IpEats oF DrAcGonaL LicHTInG AND 


RapraALt Expansion 
I. A Museum witHovut SKYLIGHTS 


II. Guare in Museum GALLERIES . 


court plan. 


III. Tur SKIAscoPpE 


IU. InsTaLuaATion. THE Iprau or Restruu Inspection 


J. Museum FaTIcuE . “ : : : 


II. Seats AS PREVENTIVES OF FATIGUE . 


° 


e 


3 


AS 


fitf 
82 
89 


. 103 


. 110 


ae 2 | 
. 123 


. 137 
. 139 


. . e . e 162 
Attic light versus side or top light. The nave plan versus the 


. 238 


. 249 
. 251 
. 270 


XXII CONTENTS 


IV. Exercesis. Tur Ipeats or OFrriciAL COMPANIONSHIP AND 
THE INTERPRETATIVE CATALOGUE . . . . « « Q&7 


I. THE Musmum Docunt ~~ . «- %& | ly Souci 


II. Docent SERVICE AT THE Boston Art Museum . <2 OLe 


III. Fun Prosuem or tHe LABEL . 4... 2). ee 
IV. GALLERY Books MP 
V. GovERNMENT. THE IDEAL oF Composite Boarps. SomME 
GENERAL PROBLEMS Pe 
I. Toe Day or THE Expert . .%. ¢ eae 


II. ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION AND ITs Two PEeRTuRBATIONS 363 
III. Executive ABILITY WITH AND WITHOUT QuoTATION Marks 369 
IV. Tur Economics oF A CHARITABLE FouNDATION . .  . 372 
V. MusmoumMs AND THE PUBLIC .  .. «8 ee) 


Museum publicity. State support and free admission. 


APPENDIX 
AIMS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTRUCTION AND MANAGEMENT 
or MusEeums or Fine Art: ASYLLABUS . . . . . . 397 
Museum Reaistry or Pusuic Art ow) Be | Seas 


I. Musreums or ART AND THE CONSERVATION OF Monuments . 410 


Il. Tue Recistry or Pustic ArT AT THE Musrum or Fine 
Arts, Boston . ok ee Yipee 


OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPEAN MUSEUMS © ee ie nie 


MUSEUM IDEALS 


PART I. PURPOSE 
I. ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 
If. POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 
Ill. THE AIMS OF MUSEUMS 


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MUSEUM IDEALS 


I 
ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 


I LEARNED to read from a book called “‘Reading without 
Tears.” A single page remains in my memory. Two chil- 
dren are playing in a nursery. One calls to the other: 
“Come quickly to the window and see the queen go by!” 
At the corner of the page appeared a captivating picture 
of the queen in all her state. ? 

Such a child is every artist. The window is his art. The 
playmate is his public. The queen is his vision. 
ti a 
(FINE ART AND BEAUTY 

The root meaning of the word “‘art”’ is that of construc- 
tion, or the purposed combination of things. A passing re- 
mark of Aristotle’s! divides the arts of mankind into the 
arts of our Necessities (avayxaia) and the arts of Pastime 
(Svaywyn); the distinction being that the arts of our Neces- 
sities are followed for their use (vpjols), the arts of Pas- 
time for their own sake. This dichotomy of the arts has 
been current in Europe since. Our English adjective “‘fine”’ 
applied to art means that the purpose of the artist is ful- 
filled as soon as his work exists. It satisfies him simply by 
being. The adjective “useful”? means that the purpose of 
the artist is not fulfilled until his work brings something 
else to pass. It satisfies him only by doing. Art consists in 
rearranging our surroundings nearer our desires, and is 
fine art or useful. art according as the rearrangement ful- 

1 Metaphysics, 1. 


6 MUSEUM IDEALS 


fils its aim immediately and by itself, or indirectly and by 
proxy. 

In Continental languages the arts, called in English 
“fine” are called the “‘arts of Beauty” (Belle Arti, Beaux 
Arts, Schoene Kuenste, etc.). The usage adheres to the 
only immemorial and authoritative conception of beauty: 
that of a value inherent in the beautiful thing, to be felt 
as soon as it exists. According to the Taoist books in 
China (deriving from Lao-Tse, 600 B.c.) beauty is “the 
usefulness of the useless.”” It is a certain merit which 
things may still possess, although they are of no avail to 
bring anything else worth while to pass. Although good 
for nothing, a thing need not be worthless. It may be good 
in itself; and this is what is called its beauty. The Asiatic 
conception was reached independently in Africa a millen- 
nium later. St. Augustine writes in his “Confessions”! 
of discovering, after long thought, the distinction between 
the Beautiful and the Fit (Pulchrum et Aptum). The one he 
defines as that which is complete in itself; the other as that 
whose value lies in its adjustment to other things. More 
than a millennium later a similar idea reappears in Europe. 
To Immanuel Kant beauty was “‘Purposiveness without 
purpose.”” Unclear as this utterance remains in spite of 
the context and the commentators, the likeness to the 
Taoist phrase is striking, and its kinship to St. Augustine’s 
conclusion apparent. A thing may be suited to nothing 
else, and yet may suit us. In this event, although useless, 
it is beautiful. The production of things having such an 
internal worth is the object of Aristotle’s arts of Pastime, 
our fine arts; and they are properly called the beautiful 
arts. 

The inquiry may be pushed further. When a thing is 
good in itself, what is it that makes it so? Of what nature 

t Book rv, 13. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 7 


is this experience that we have only to become aware of to 
be satisfied with? What is this intrinsic value that we call 
beauty? The answer given Is that it is joy, or delight, or by 
whatever other name we choose to call the well-known fact. 
A beautiful thing is one that is pleasing in itself. Pleasure 
is the one intrinsically valuable thing known to man. Even 
virtue and knowledge gain their worth from the happiness 
they promise. The question — Why should we do right? 
— is one that can be and often has been put and proven. 
The question — What good is knowledge apart from the 
happiness it brings in pursuit or use? — can also be argued. 
But the questions — Why should we be happy? — What 
good is pleasure? — are nonsense to every one. 

It is possible to misconstrue this doctrine. Yet it con- 
tains a fundamental truth as these questions show; and 
one that needs only to be built upon by an inquiry into the 
relation of truth and right to pleasure. In advance we may 
admit that it justifies the definition of the fine arts con- 
tributed by the critic Hazlitt in the last century to the 
Encyclopedia Britannica. The fine arts are those “‘ aiming 
at the production of pleasure by the rmmediate impression 
which they make on the mind.’ This immediate impression 
of pleasure we call their beauty. The present century inter- 
prets this conclusion in thoroughgoing fashion, affirming 
that an object is not beautiful unless our pleasure in it is as 
much a part of it as its color or shape or any other in- 
herent quality. As Mr. Santayana now phrases it, beauty 
is “‘objectified pleasure.” 

While the edition of the Britannica was current in 
which Hazlitt’s Essay appeared, another noted English- 
man gave a definition of the fine arts which appears at 

‘first sight to contravene it. In his address at St. Andrews 
in 1865, John Stuart Mill said: ‘‘If I were to define art, I 
should be inclined to call it the endeavor after perfection 


8 MUSEUM IDEALS 


in execution. If we meet with even a piece of mechanical 
work which bears the marks of being done in this spirit — 
which is done as if the workman loved it and tried to make 
it as good as possible, though something less good would 
have answered the purpose for which it was ostensibly 
made — we say he has worked like an artist.” The essen- 
tial agreement of this view with Hazlitt’s comes to light 
when we reflect what it is to love an inanimate object. 
Love in this sense is delight in the presence of the object; 
it is pleasure derived immediately from it, and coming from 
nothing to which the object leads, from which it proceeds, 
or which is in any way other than itself. Any product of 
human purpose, according to Stuart Mill, which evidences 
its maker’s love for it — his pleasure in the immediate 
impression which it makes on his mind—is a work of fine 
art. Here we rejoin the Britannica definition. 

The production of even a piece of mechanical work giv- 
ing this direct pleasure Stuart Mill called “perfection of 
execution.”” The phrase is apt; for any creation which 
satisfies us as well directly by what it is to us, as indirectly 
by what it does for us, may rightly be called per-factum, 
made through or thoroughly. Chopin’s highest praise for 
music expressed the idea of perfection in negative terms: 
Rien ne me choque. Not that his perceptions were a blank; 
but that their intense activity awakened no desires — at 
least marked ones — without satisfying them. 


GIFT AND CRAFT 


As a matter of fact the human brain, and we may doubt- 
less say, the human hand, is capable, undirected by con- 
scious purpose, of products more nearly perfect, leaving 
less to be desired, than any won by pains. It is not by art 
but by nature that men best attain the direct delight that 
is the aim of fine art. 


“ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 9 


The admission is general. Milton wrote of Shakespeare: 


‘Whilst to the shame of slow endeavoring art © 
Thy easy numbers flow, ...” 
The prouder source from which they flowed was Shake- 
speare’s quick conceiving nature. Matthew Arnold 
writes: “‘Wordsworth’s poetry, when he is at his best, is 
inevitable, as inevitable as Nature itself. It might seem 
that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem 
but wrote his poem for him.”’ Of the jewels five words long 
that sparkle throughout literature — “Southward many 
an emerald mile” or Shakespeare’s own “‘John-a-dreams, 
unpregnant of my cause’’ — it would seem likewise that 
many must have presented themselves as they are to the 
mind of the poet, who only wrote them down, as Coleridge 
wrote down “Kubla Khan” from a dream. A French 
critic declares in general terms, “Masterpieces are made 
without thought, without even intention,’ — that is, 
without art. 

As a matter of fact also what is born to brain or hand 
as a thing of joy is apt to be but a germ, an item of promise, 
whose persistent contemplation invites change for the 
better. How insignificant the origin in Beethoven’s note- 
books, of the immortal melody sung at the close of the 
Ninth Symphony. Its finished form is a triumph of art 
over nature. 

Here appear at once the sphere and the limits of fine 
art. Its purpose is to finish a promising beginning, to per- 
fect it, to make it thoroughly, to produce from a sugges- 
tion of charm a completely satisfactory thing; yet the prod- 
ucts of the greatest application may be outdone by the free 
gifts of inspiration. A suggestion may defy completion. 

Two allied sources of mistake obscure to us the suprem- 
acy of inspiration. We hear that in fine art matter is indif- 
ferent; form alone gives it value. Heine, with characteris- 


10 MUSEUM IDEALS 


tic irreverence, and also characteristic sharp-sightedness, 
makes fun of this principle, naming a certain tailor of 
his time who “charges the same for a dress coat, whether 
or not he furnishes the cloth.” ! We hear also that artistic 
excellence resides in method, not in result of method; in 
the solution of a problem, irrespective of whether the prob- 
lem is worth solving or not. Byron wrote, “The poet who 
executes best is the highest.” ? Each of these opinions may 
appear to give the palm in fine art to reflection rather than 
spontaneity. In reality neither does; for the form of a 
work of art and its method may be as much the fruit of 
spontaneity as of reflection. 


MATTER AND FORM 


There remain the questions: What do these utterances 
of two preéminent minds, and of others before and since 
really signify; and are they true or false? Does the beauty 
of a work of fine art in fact reside in its subject or its treat- 
ment? Is its immediate charm in fact an affair of the way 
it is done or the thing that is done? 

First, as to the question of matter and form. These two 
words are used in a sense opposite to their philosophic 
meaning when we refer them to the subject and treatment 
of a work of art. In the exact acceptation, the form of any 
object of sense may be defined as the complex of relations 
subsisting between its parts; the matter of it consisting in 
these parts themselves. We grasp its form by the use of the 


1 Gedanken und Einfiille. Kunstwerk. “In der Kunst ist die Form alles, der 
Stoff gilt Nichts. Staub berechnet fiir den Frack, den er ohne Tuch geliefert, 
denselben Preis, als wenn ihm das Tuch geliefert worden. Er lasse sich nur die 
Form bezahlen, und den Stoff Schenke er.” 

Again in Schépfungslieder, 6: 

“Den Himmel erschuf ich aus der Erd 
Und Engel aus Weiberentfaltung, 
Der Stoff gewinnt erst seinen Werth 
Durch kiinstlerische Gestaltung.” 


~? Letter to John Murray on Rev. W. L. Bowles’s Strictures on Pope. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 11 


intellect, its matter by the use of the senses. When the 
words are applied specifically to works of art, the reverse 
is the case. We grasp what is called the matter of a work of 
art by using our powers of generalization upon it; the form 
given this matter by using our powers of perception. Its 
subject consists of abstract ideas which the work em- 
bodies; its treatment consists of the concrete embodiment 
given these ideas. 

The philosophic meaning of the words “‘form’’ and “‘ mat- 
ter’ may be illustrated by a wave. What is it that travels 
toward us when a wave approaches the shore? Not the 
water composing it. Each particle of water simply oscil- 
lates up and down, forward and back. Adjacent particles 
successively assume a certain complex of space relations 
among themselves; and it is the appearance of this form 
that approaches. What dashes overwhelmingly upon the 
rocks is the matter of the wave, its component particles of 
water, each rising and falling, advancing and retreating. 

In applying the same words to a work of art we are mis- 
led into thinking of its matter likewise as something solid 
and concrete, and of its form as something tenuous and 
abstract. Meanwhile in reality the réles are exchanged. 
It is the matter or subject of a work of art that is the tenu- 
ous and abstract thing; and the form or treatment that is 
the solid and concrete thing. This specialized usage con- 
fines the matter of a work of fine art to general ideas which 
we may believe it expressed dimly or clearly to the artist; 
and regards its form as the embodiment he has given these 
ideas, considered independently. The proviso limiting 
matter to those general ideas under whose guidance we may 
conceive the artist to have worked is a necessary one. 
Else part of the matter treated in a landscape showing the 
mouldering roof of a cottage might be the idea of the 
lamentable fate of those born before the invention of a 


12 MUSEUM IDEALS 


certain wood preservative; for this, too, is a general idea 
which the picture may express to a manufacturer inspect- 
ing it. So understanding the terms matter and form, the 
question — ‘‘What proportion of the beauty of a work 
of art is due to its matter and what to its form?” — is an 
impossible one. We cannot subtract its matter and leave its 
form. The two things compared must be the matter on one 
side and the total work on the other. We must ask — What 
proportion is there between the beauty which abstract 
notions may possess and that which may be given their 
concrete illustration? Not, be it noted, the proportion 
between the value of an abstract notion and the value 
of its concrete illustration. By the beauty of a general 
idea we do not mean its usefulness, the indirect worth it 
may possess through the grasp it gives us of the world, 
but the pleasure its simple contemplation affords. To the 
question as thus stated the answer cannot be doubtful. 
Heine is right. Speaking broadly, the internal fascination 
of the matter of a work of fine art considered separately is 
a negligible affair compared with the charm which may 
inhere in the total work as formed matter. To use the 
familiar word, the “‘story”’ of a work of art, made up out 
of the general ideas it embodies, contributes only minimally 
to the beauty it may possess. 

In proof of this conclusion let us take two actual in- 
stances in which the matter of a poem has been outlined 
for us, in the one case by the poet, in the other by an ac- 
curate if antipathetic observer. Poe thus describes in detail 
the story of his poem “The Raven”’; without being able 
to avoid making his description itself a kindred work of 
art in prose. “‘A raven, having learned by rote the single 
word ‘Nevermore,’ and having escaped from its owner, is 
driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to 
seek admission at a window from which a light stil] gleams 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 13 


—the chamber window of a student, occupied half in 
poring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mis- 
tress deceased. The casement being thrown open at the 
fluttering of the bird’s wings, the bird itself perches on the 
most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the 
student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of 
the visitor’s demeanor, demands of it, in jest and with- 
out looking for a reply, its name. The Raven addressed 
answers with its customary word ‘Nevermore’ — a word 
which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the 
student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts 
suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl’s 
repetition of ‘Nevermore.’ The student now guesses the 
state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before explained, 
by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by super- 
stition, to propound such queries to the bird as will bring 
him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow through the 
anticipated answer ‘Nevermore.’ ...The reader begins 
now to regard the Raven as emblematical — but it is not 
until the very last line of the very last stanza that the in- 
tention of making him emblematical of Mournful and never- 
ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly to be seen.” 

The other instance is the following succinct account of 
the story of Tennyson’s “Enoch Arden,” which is said to 
have been given by the English economist Walter Bage- 
hot. “A sailor who sells fish breaks his leg, gets dismal, 
gives up selling fish, goes to sea, is wrecked on a desert 
island, stays there some years, on his return finds his wife 
married to another, speaks to a landlady on the subject, 
and dies.” 7 

As to the other member of the comparison, what shall 
we say is the work of art itself? The impressions received 
in contemplating it may be very different things with dif- 
ferent people. Which can be called the work? 


14 MUSEUM IDEALS 


What the poet Edwin Markham found in Muillet’s pic- 
ture of the ‘‘Man with the Hoe” he has eloquently set 
forth in the poem bearing that title: 

““Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 


The emptiness of ages in his face, 
And on his back the burden of the world. 


**Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? . 
What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 


* How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, 
After the silence of the centuries?” 


But let us hear Millet himself. His ruling purpose, he 
tells us, was to paint man and his surroundings as a unit; 
and this purpose is now spoken of as his especial origi- 
nality, his contribution to the art of landscape. “When 
you paint a picture,” he said, “‘be it a house, a wood, a 
plain, the sea, the sky, think always of the presence of man, 
of his affinities of joy or pain with such a spectacle; then 
an inward voice will speak to you of his family, his occu- 
pations, his anxieties, his predilections; the idea will bring 
within that orbit all humanity; in creating a landscape 
you will think of man, in creating a man you will think of 
the landscape.” Of the ‘‘ Man with the Hoe,” he wrote to a 
friend: ‘‘'The on dit about my ‘ Man with the Hoe’ always 
seem to me most strange, and I am obliged to you for tell- 
ing me of them, for they give me a new opportunity to 
wonder at the ideas that are attributed to me. In what 
Union did my critics ever find me? Socialist! Truly I 
could answer them in the words of that Auvergnat com- 
missioner who replied to a criticism from his fellow-towns- 
men: “They say at home that I am a Saint-Simonian; 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 15 


*t isn’t true, I don’t even know what that means.’ Can’t 
people simply conceive the ideas which may come into 
one’s mind at the sight of a man who is destined to gain 
his living by the sweat of his brow? There are even people 
who say that I deny the charm of the country. I find far 
more than charms. I find infinite splendors. I see as well 
as they do the little flowers of which Christ said: ‘Even 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ 
I see clearly the haloes of the dandelions, and the sun 
which unfolds yonder, over the landscape and beyond, his 
glory in the clouds. I see no less, in the smoking plain, 
horses at work; then in a stony spot a man tired out, whose 
ejaculation ‘han’ has been heard since morning, and who 
tries to straighten up and get his breath. The drama is 
wrapped in splendors. My critics are educated people of 
taste, I fancy; but I cannot put myself in their skin, and as 
I have never in all my life seen anything but the fields, I 
try to say as I can what I have seen and experienced while 
I worked there.” 

Far less success than Millet met in trying to say on 
canvas what he had seen and experienced might attend 
other artists with other beholders. Imagine the Abbé 
Prévost’s novel of “Manon Lescaut’? perused by Goethe’s 
student in “Faust,” in whose opinion 


“The hand that Saturdays wields the broom 
Will best caress thee Sundays.” 


Or by the English squire of the popular play, who wooed 
because “‘The Hall needs a mistress, and tts hearth- 
stones baby feet”; or by Rodolphe in Murger’s “Vive de 
Bohéme” with his learned certainty that “l’instrument 
était d’accord”’; or by Dante, whom the maiden he had 
met but twice or thrice on earth must warn him, even in 
heaven, “‘ Not only in my eyes is Paradise.”” To the Bursch 
the novel would suggest blows — “ Pruegel’”’ ; to the squire, 


16 MUSEUM IDEALS 


divorce. To Rodolphe it would give back his whole youth; 
to Dante also bits of heaven, all spotted by the world. 
What must his Crucifixion in San Marco have been to Fra 
Angelico as he painted it; and what would it have been to 
Geronimo and his band of Apaches, who heard the story 
after their capture only to grunt their regret that this par- — 
ticular method of death by torture had never occurred to 
them in any of their raids? These are differences of com- 
prehension based on mental and moral endowment and 
experience. There are also differences of physical capacity: 
muscular and tactile idiosyncrasies; individualities of visual 
or auditory perception — varieties of type or range of 
sensations of sight, varieties of force, discrimination and 
retentiveness of sensations of noise or tone. 

These are the differences and the possibilities of dif- 
ference between individual impressions from one and the 
same work of art. What then is the work? Evidently it is 
the thing the artist wrought; and this thing is the total 
impression from the work which satisfied him to leave it 
as it is, to believe it thoroughly made — per-factum — as 
far as possible to him. To find the work made we must go 
back to the maker. Instead of assuming him to be in our 
skin — to use Millet’s phrase — we must put ourselves in 
his skin. We must resurrect, as far as we may, the sensa- 
tions, images, thoughts and feelings which his finished crea- 
tion embodied to him. We must conceive the work as it 
unrolled itself in his mind, when, at its completion, he 
could review it in every part, in the revel (Schmaus) which 
Mozart said the final review of his compositions brought 
him. It is this experience that we must engender again in 
our own spirit if we would know the work of art as it is. 
In the words of Pope: 


**A perfect judge will read each work of wit 
In the same spirit that its author writ.’’} 





1 Essay on Criticism, Part 11. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 17 


Anything short of this reconstitution of the artist’s own 
perception of his work is ignorance of it more or less pro- 
found; for it is ignorance of that which brought it into being, 
of that for which it exists at all. 

It is true that by no means every workman intending 
that the fruit of his toil shall offer the world materials for 
such a revel obtains his wish. We sometimes speak of the 
artist as of a supernal being differing in kind and not sim- 
ply in degree from other men. An artist’s work may even 
in part be his despair; as when Rostand exclaims: “‘ What 
matters it though rhyme and metre yield to us, if the 
dream we would put into them no longer lives!””! He may 
mistrust both it and himself; as when Zola asks: “Surely, 
there is some good in what I have done”’; or Kipling: 
“Heart of my heart, have I done well?’ His enthusiasm 
may be a fire of straw that in the end would have burned 
itself out where it was kindled; as we may believe of many 
of the 


“.. epics... wrecked by time 


Since Herrick launched his cockle-shells of rhyme.” 

He may live to condemn his work himself, as we may fancy 
that emulator of Michel Angelo did who perished of chagrin 
under the ridicule heaped upon his Moses of the Fontana 
dei Termini. Or, however inextinguishable in himself, he 
may find the fire of his fancy incommunicable to others, as 
Bizet found the beauties of his “‘C armen” incommunicable 
to the Paris of his day. But unless the fire is there, the 
revel ready, he is no artist at all, as Arnold reminded his 
fellow-craftsmen in uncouth lines that seem humorously 
intended as an instance of what they condemn: 


**What poets feel not, when they make, 
A pleasure in creating, 
The world in zts turn will not take 
Pleasure in contemplating.” 


1 FE. Rostand, Le Vers et l’ Idée: 


18 MUSEUM IDEALS 


Nevertheless, it is in the artist’s own soul, great or small, 
that alone we can find his work. In spite of all the uncer- 
tainties and difficulties of the task, we must try to live over 
again — as far as we may, and it may not be very far — 
his experience as its re-reader, re-auditor, re-spectator. 
To know it we must go back to him. 

According to Schopenhauer, the artistic object is in it- 
self what he calls a Platonic Idea, although he is ready to 
admit that Plato might have questioned the appropriate- 
ness of the name. It is a something neither abstract nor 
concrete, but both at once — what may be called a uni- 
versal particular. This sounds like one of those distressing 
things, not unknown in philosophy, which are what they 
are not. But if we may interpret the phrase by our own 
lights the laws of thought still stand in spite of it. The work 
of art is not the sum of abstractions the artist sought to 
embody in it; nor yet the particular thing which any and 
every one may find it to be; but only that particular thing 
~ which the artist recognizes as his message to whom it may 
concern. He may have caught the ultramarine of a brim- 
ming brook against the new green of springing grass under 
an April sky, and forced the tones of the combination, 
subordinating or omitting other details that were unneces- 
sary to its verisimilitude or distracting from the beauty 
that had struck his fancy. This is to see things through a 
mood, or a temperament, or an endowment; as a portrait 
does and a photograph does not. The real picture does not 
lie on the canvas open to every eye, but in the mind of the 
artist and his twin-brother, the beholder whose eyes are 
portals to a like mind. In this sense we may agree that a 
work of art is a universal particular: an Idea, in at least 
a new Platonic acceptation. 

The two members of the comparison — the matter and 
the work — are now clear. On the one hand, the matter, 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 19 


consisting of certain general ideas which the work expresses 
to the artist; on the other, this subject formed into the 
concrete object experienced by him as the work. In com- 
paring the two in the specimen instances of “The Raven ”’ 
and “Enoch Arden,” our business is to estimate the inter- 
nal charm of the subjects of these poems as stated to us, 
in relation to the charm of the objects which we know as 
the poems. To this end we must try at first to divest our- 
selves of our knowledge of the poems, lest fragments of their 
form should mingle for us with their matter in recurrent 
memories. We must further try to neglect the opposite 
tempers in which the two stories are narrated, one insen- 
sibly harmonizing with the mood of the poem, the other 
purposely diverting us from it. We must then compare the 
two series of abstractions with the poems as we re-read 
them. Thus carrying out the two comparisons, it appears, 
as it would in any other cases, that the beauty of the mat- 
ter of a work of art is a vanishing quantity compared with 
the beauty that the work itself may possess. Poe’s sum- 
mary of “The Raven”’ has little, indeed, of the compelling 
power of the poem even to us of another century. Who 
that has heard “‘Enoch Arden” read as it may be will 
remember the cry, “A sail! A sail!’’ with anything but 
a thrill, or Bagehot’s epitome with anything but impa- 
tience. The subjects of the two poems seem simple threads 
through them, the verses themselves two superbly woven 
textures — of apt and graceful expression, of imagery, of 
pathos, of insight, of rhythm, of harmony and melody of 
sound — that the threads serve only to bind together. 
Speaking generally, no exposition in abstract terms of the 
content of any work of man’s hand that the maker loved 
and made for us to love, possesses an immediate pleasur- 
ableness, a beauty, even remotely approximating the par- 
ticular delight of which it was born and which it aims to 


20 MUSEUM IDEALS 


perpetuate. To seek formulas in which its kernel of native 
charm shall be imprisoned, its inherently valuable essence 
drawn off for us, is to grasp at shadows for substance, and 
to leave ourselves poor when we might be rich. In Géréme’s 
atelier, before the picture called Les Deux Majestés show- 
ing a lion crouching in the desert and gazing at the rising 
sun, a visitor is said once to have remarked: “C’est bien, 
ca; mais quwest-ce que cela prouve ?”’ “Cela prouve,” re- 
plied Géréme, “que vous étes rdrot.”’ } 

The question implicit in the remark of Heine has proved 
impossible to answer as he suggested it. Does the beauty 
of a work of art reside in its matter or its form? Of the 
second member of this alternative we have no independent 
experience. We can isolate more or less of the subject of 
a work of art in a series of statements, but the process of 
abstraction leaves no residue that we can separately iden- 
tify as the treatment. For this we have been constrained to 
substitute the work of art itself, and have found that 
beauty of matter, inherent charm of a group of abstrac- 
tions, is as nothing compared with the immediate pleas- 
urableness, the beauty, that we may discover when we try 
to reproduce in ourselves the total of impressions, sensory, 
imaginative, and emotional, in which we are led to think 
the work consisted to the workman. Heine’s remark, al- 
though an inexact statement, involves a truth. 


PROCESS AND PRODUCT 


The question implicit in Byron’s remark, although a pos- 
sible one, proves also unanswerable. Does the beauty of a 


1 The same conclusion may be indirectly reached by a strict deduction from 
indubitable premises. While we cannot isolate the form of a work of art, we can 
compare two embodiments of the same motive: for example the Joan of Arc of 
Dubois and the Joan of Arc of Frémiet. The differences between them belong to 
the factor of form. Now these differences are literally infinite. But in calling the 
subject of the two the same we define it as a finite group of abstractions. 
Whence it follows mathematically that matter in a work of art vanishes in com- 
parison with form. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 21 


work of art reside in method or result of method? The 
question is unanswerable because it shuts us up to one or 
other alternative. “The poet that executes best is the 
highest”’ suggests that artistic excellence inheres in the way 
a thing is done. What is done does not count. The truth is 
that either or both may count. Byron’s remark — thus 
interpreted and perhaps unjustly — although an exact 
statement, involves an untruth. The thing its maker loved, 
and made for us to love, may be either a process of accom- 
plishment, or the product accomplished, or both at once. 
What he took his delight in may either be solely his use of 
means to an end, or solely the end he reached, irrespective 
of how he came there; or he may glory in dexterity and 
achievement at once. 

All our sports, including games of skill, are, in their meas- 
ure and way, fine arts of the process. They consist in 
bodies of rules for reaching certain goals in rivalry; and the 
true spirit of sport consists In an enjoyment of strife to- 
ward the goal under the rules. The goal may be, and often 
is, wholly indifferent. Victory, the attainment of it, is a 
touchstone of the excellence of the striving, and its antic- 
ipation is one source of our delight in the striving; but the 
sport is over when it ensues, and its joys — the bag, the 
decision, the record, the prize — are an addendum to the 
sporting fervor. The real sportsman — the true lover of 
hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing, football, tennis, golf, 
billiards, cards, chess — is an artist of the process. He is 
even satisfied to lose, if he has played his game well — 
that is, in a way that in the long run would bring victory 
— for his joy is gaudium certaminis. 

Gaudium certaminis in real life may develop the artistic 
spirit. Admiral Dewey, just after his “‘“conquest of an em- 
pire without the loss of a man,” is said to have remarked, 
“TI hope it will be thought a workman-like job,” having in 


22 MUSEUM IDEALS 


mind, not the empire, but the conquest. The railroad or- 
ganizer Harriman is reported to have remarked of his suc- 
cess, ‘‘There is more in the game for me than what has 
been said; there is the satisfaction of doing a thing right” ! 
— jin his turn thinking, not of the systems consolidated, 
with the wealth and power they brought him, but of the 
ingenious, daring and patient combinations by which he 
effected his purposes, other men notwithstanding. These 
were a work of art; there was beauty in them. 

The joy of non-competitive struggle, mental or bodily — 
gaudium certaminis without an animate opponent — may 
make of it a work of art. A mathematical proof brings to 
light two chief sources of our delight in the use of means. 
We may take pleasure either in their economy or their 
aptness. Economy of means gives us a sense of power, their 
aptness a sense of good fortune; both pleasant things, 
capable of making the process that illustrates them warm 
our hearts as we review it. A geometrical demonstration 
may be elegant both because so simple and because we 
wonder at the discovery of the tiny but inevitable gateway 
to the new certainty. The certainty itself — for instance, 
that the angle reached by the proof is the tenth part of a 
circle — may be wholly indifferent. The method, not the 
result, is here a work of fine art. Feats of strength, agility, 
leger-de-main, may become works of fine art, uninterest- 
ing as the deeds accomplished — the thrown weight, the 
cleared bar, the bits of paper held in the air by a fan — 
may be in themselves. What the singer admires, and 
wants us to admire in his roulades, the violinist in his 
cadenzas, is not the musical phrases — these may be 
empty and tedious enough — but the deft play of the 
vocal organs, the miraculous bowing and fingering. 

Yet incomparably the more important type of fine art 

1 At a dinner of the Economic Club in New York, November 30, 1908. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 23 


is that in which the work is product also, and not solely, 
if at all, process; an end achieved, whether or not the means 
toward the end as well. The product may be an occur- 
rence — as in literature, music, acting, the dance — or a 
tangible object — as in painting, sculpture, their minor 
derivatives and architecture. In either case the process 
remains unperceived by the beholder, although the product 
may in one or another point betray it, and by intention of 
the artist. His art is then one of both process and product. 
The gossamer make of a Chinese ink-painting may pro- 
pose to the beholder’s admiration the wonderful surety of 
the maker’s hand; the endless refinements of a Greek carv- 
ing his acuteness of eye, his delicacy of hand, the subtlety 
and reach of his imagination. 

But for the beholder of productive art there remains 
between process and product the gulf that separates per- 
ception from inference. He does not see, he only fancies, 
the artist at work. There remains for him also the bar that 
any ignorance of the artist’s craft may interpose. There 
remains for him also the immense disproportion between 
the range of impressions concerned in process and prod- 
uct: on the one side the events of a workshop, on the 
other the macrocosm about the maker, the whole of life 
outside his technical task, any part of which the microcosm 
forming the work may set before its beholder. Finally, the 
choicest elements of his work, those due to inspiration, con- 
tain no intimation of the process of their birth, for there 
was no process. They did not become at all, they simply 
were, to him as they are to us. These are conclusions very 
damaging to the element of process in productive art. The 
beholder means the future. The value he cannot descry is 
not the worth whereby l’uom s’eterna — the maker im- 
mortalizes himself. For the beholder the beauties of genesis 
are too impossibly recondite, too absurdly scanty, com- 


24 MUSEUM IDEALS 


pared with the open and illimitable charm which a product 
may possess independently of all its hints of how it came to 
be. Technical qualities — if by this phrase we mean fea- 
tures that betray the secrets of a craft — are nothing: the 
work of art apart from them is everything. They doubtless 
made up the chief beauty of a coat by Heine’s tailor, for we 
may believe it offered little to the non-sartorial eye; like- 
wise the brushwork of a painter, that makes its effect as if 
by enchantment, may be our wonder and his pride. But 
when all is said, we can still call these beauties nothing. 
Our admiration of skill has its close limits; our admiration 
of its results none. 

But let us be on our guard against the deceitfulness of 
words. The phrase “technical qualities”’ has plainly an- 
other meaning, and one of importance for beauty. Techni- 
cal quality in a sestina may mean, it is true, the dexterous 
process which we infer laid out six stanzas and a final trip- 
let with the same six terminal words in varied combina- 
tions, and fitted to them comprehensible and charming 
lines. The idea of this process counts truly for little in its 
beauty. But technical quality may also mean a fact of 
observation: the fact, for instance, that all the six stanzas 
and the final triplet of a poem ring changes on the same 
six words; and this is a most enjoyable characteristic of 
the product. The phrase technical quality can rightly be 
applied to such a feature for the reason that only a writer 
long exercised in metrical composition can compass it. 
Technical qualities in this sense are difficult beauties. 
They are the perfections of execution in a work of art, 
its far-fetched and dear-bought excellences. Doubtless it 
is this sense that we must read into Byron’s dictum. If 
so, no knowledge of the artist’s craft is needed to perceive 
the perfection of execution he praised: only eyes and their 
patient use. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 25 


It is true that a knowledge of the possibilities of failure 
in such attempts may greatly sharpen our eyes and develop 
our patience in the apprehension of their success. The 
case may be compared to that of translation. The process 
of finding the nearest equivalent in one language for an 
expression in another may reveal to us its meaning much 
more quickly than the process of acquiring it as a part of a 
mother tongue. Nevertheless the mental standpoint of the 
translator is one of only demi-culture. Until he can forget 
the vernacular quasi-equivalent, until he can return wholly 
to the atmosphere of the phrase to be translated, as if it 
were his mother tongue, he has but half comprehended it. 
So with the apprehension of a piece of productive art. 
Unless we can forget the thoughts of method which have 
sharpened our eyes and developed our patience to appre- 
hend its results, and live alone in these results, we have 
missed the full impression that the artist offers us. The 
mental standpoint of the beholder who must find in knowl- 
edge of technique the key to a grasp of technical qualities, 
of the hard-won excellences in the work beheld, is also one 
of demi-culture. Yet let us not deny to the demi-culture of 
translation its rights to respect. Better a thousand times 
only to touch the hem of ancient saintly garments than to 
ignore the Vedas and the Prophets altogether; and only 
to look into faces transfigured by beautiful visions than to 
know nothing at all of Sophocles, or Virgil or Tolstoi. So 
the aid of a knowledge of craftsmanship is not to be de- 
spised, if it but supply, and not intensify, the lack of in- 
tuitive recognition. 

However perceived, the apprehension of technical quali- 
ties in this sense does not shut us up in the atelier, but 
opens to us the world without. But while they may be 
choice parts of the finished work, they may not be its 
choicest part. The fruits of inspiration are still the despair 


26 MUSEUM IDEALS 


of technique, still ‘“‘the shame of slow-endeavoring art.” 
These have no paternity on earth. They are nameless 
offspring of an immaculate conception, as all the greatest 
blessings of mankind are held to be. 

The answer to the question implicit in Byron’s dictum 
proves more complex than the conclusion as to matter and 
form. It appears that there are two types of fine art: one 
in which the work of art — the thing “‘done as if the maker 
loved it,” to use Mill’s phrase —is the means he uses to- 
ward an end; the other in which it is also, if not exclusively, 
the end he reached. There are also two senses which may 
be given the phrase “technical quality.”’ In the fine arts 
of process, technical qualities in the first sense of features 
telling of productive activity, are everything, the result 
achieved nothing. In the arts of product, — the fine arts 
par excellence — they are nothing, the result everything. 
But the phrase may also mean features of a result: those, 
namely, which it requires much practice in an art to 
achieve, though none to apprehend; and in this second sense 
the productive arts owe technical qualities much, albeit not 
the best, of their beauty. 

A woeful error — apparently not uncurrent — jumbles 
the dicta of Heine and Byron. The blunder may be stated 
in the following inference: In fine art, matter is nothing, 
form everything; therefore what an artist takes for his 
theme is indifferent, the whole of art lies in his way of 
treating it. That this conclusion is an extravagance ap- 
pears when we reflect that in the general judgment a half- 
length would never be so good a portrait if taken from the 
waist down, as it might be if taken from the waist up; nor 
a picture of an ulcer — to keep to a bearable instance — 
ever so commanding a work of art as a landscape might be. 
The painter Raffaelli even affirms that there never was a 
well-painted battle piece. The conclusion rejected, what 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 27 


is wrong with the inference? The fallacy is plausible. If 
matter is zero in art, what difference can it make from what 
zero an artist starts? The reply is that to call matter noth- 
ing in comparison with the work that sets it forth is not to 
deny the endless differences of such nothings. The ab- 
stract notions that make them up are like the differentials 
of mathematics, all infinitesimal, yet varying indefinitely 
when integrated. The fallacy is plausible; yet so egregious 
as to be well-nigh impossible of statement in terms which 
shall not be laughable. Are there then no differences of 
enjoyableness in objects illustrating different general ideas: 
a tree and a pencil, for instance, a disaster and a dance? 
Thus reduced to clarity, the muddled persuasion that 
motive is indifferent in fine art, treatment all-powerful, 
proves only ridiculous. 

These two tendencies of opinion regarding the fine arts 
par excellence — that which seeks their beauty in matter, 
instead of formed matter, and that which seeks it in proc- 
ess, instead of finished product — are both vagaries, indic- 
ative the one of the lay attitude of mind, the other of the 
professional. They are Idols of the Cave, to use Lord 
Bacon’s metaphor: illusions born of the different spheres 
within which men’s lives are passed. For most of us our 
whole existences are a training In an instantaneous passage 
from appearances to what they signify, from things to the 
stories they relate. The habit is out of place when the things 
are works of art. It misleads us in our search for the espe- 
cial good that the thing was made to bring us. Nevertheless 
the familiar tendency reasserts itself here also, and we ask: 
“What does this thing show?” “‘ Whither does it lead?” 
As if love led out of itself. Of the lovers in “Les Misé- 
rables’’ Victor Hugo writes: “Marius and Cosette did not 
ask whither this was going to lead them. They looked upon 
themselves as already arrived. It is a curious idea of peo- 


28 MUSEUM IDEALS 


ple to think that love leads anywhere.” ! Again, for the 
few who are artists life passes in a perpetual struggle with 
means of expression. If teachers of others, as most artists 
are at one time or another, they are perpetually criticising 
the procedure of their art, and inculcating its rules. Pro- 
cedure and its rules come therefore to dominate their 
thoughts, as they do the thoughts of professional philoso- 
phers. The process of argument, in the words of William 
James, “is usually a thing of much more pith and moment 
than any particular beliefs” it reaches. On all mankind the 
spirit of custom is “heavy as frost and deep almost as life.” 
What wonder then that the layman, confronted by an 
appearance whose native value inheres inextricably in its 
whole self as embodied abstraction, should evaluate it not 
by what there is in it, but by what he can separate out of 
it. What wonder that to a professional the work of art 
tends to mean chiefly the toil it cost, and takes its value 
chiefly from its success rather than from its claims to suc- 
ceed. Meanwhile the body of impressions which make up 
the work itself —the reality which the story outlines, the 
aim which the technique serves — is slighted. To almost 
every one the phrase “‘study of art’? means talk about it, 
or practice in it; to almost no one the occupation of con- 
templating it. Of the time and effort we devote to this 
ubiquitous study what proportion is taken up by actually 
listening to songs and symphonies, actually reading poems, 
actually inspecting pictures and statues? Let the ignorance 
out of which public and professional alike speak and write 
upon them declare how little. The public attends to the 
story of a work, the professional to its make, and neither 
to the story as made. So Cinderella sat by the fire unno- 
ticed, while her two sisters went to the ball and won the 
admiration. Yet she was the real queen and in the end re- 
ceived the crown. 


1 Les Misérables, 1v™e partie, livre 8™¢, chapitre 2. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART a9 


ART FOR ART’S SAKE 


That this often repeated phrase may not be misunder- 
stood, let us recall at the outset the definition of it given 
by a protagonist, Théophile Gautier. ‘‘Art for art’s sake 
signifies for adepts, a labor freed from every care save that 
of beauty in itself.’”! 

A work of fine art is a creation of man which is beautiful 
in its totality, whether as process or product, the work 
beautiful as product being incomparably the more im- 
portant type. 

But nothing, however satisfactory in itself, can be 
rightly valued unless seen also in its relation to the rest of 
life; and men have always sought thus to weigh the fine 
arts. Aristotle writes of tragedy: “By pity and terror it 
effects the purification of such feelings.”’ Is he not de- 
scribing rather our reaction upon drama, than drama itself; 
its use to us rather than its beauty for us? The books tell 
us that Aristotle never made himself clear upon this point. 
In one of his sonnets Michel Angelo condemns an undivided 
allegiance to beauty in reflecting upon his own past: 

“«.. . the passionate fantasy 

That made of art my idol and my king, 

How error-laden, now I know full well.’’? 
In his little prose poem “Beauté Rustique,’’ M. Anatole 
France writes of the threshing floor seen from his window: 
“Dropping my books, pen and paper, I look with envy 
upon these threshers of wheat, these simple artisans of 
man’s foremost labor. How humble and little I feel beside 
them! What they do is necessary. And we, frivolous jug- 


1 Quoted in Larousse’s Encyclopedia, article “Art.” 
2 Sonnet CXLvII. 
** Onde l’affectuosa fantasia 


Che l’arte mi fece idol e monarca, 
Conosco or ben, com’era d’error carca.” 


30 MUSEUM IDEALS 


glers, vain players on the flute, can we flatter ourselves that 
we accomplish anything, I will not say useful, but even in- 
nocent?... The laborers I see from my window will thrash 
to-day three hundred sheaves of wheat; then they will go 
to bed tired and satisfied, without a doubt as to the value 
of their work. . . . But I, shall I know to-night, when my 
pages are written, whether I have well filled my day and 
merited my sleep? Shall I know whether I have carried 
good wheat into my granary? Shall I know whether my 
words are the bread that supports life?”’ 

Here the artist of Pastime looks beyond his art, and asks 
its place in the world of our Necessities. In so doing he 
emerges from the Contemplative into the Active life; from 
the life personified for medizeval Europe by Rachel in the 
Old Testament, and Mary in the New, to that personified 
by Leah in the Old Testament and Martha in the New. The 
Contemplative life so-called by our forefathers is an ex- 
istence devoted simply to becoming aware of things; the 
Active life one which turns them to purposes beyond 
themselves. The arts of Pastime have their end in the life 
of Contemplation. Their world consists of things of which 
we only need to become aware to know their right to be. 
The arts of our Necessities end in the life of Action. Their 
world consists of things first proving their right to be when 
turned to purposes beyond themselves. 

Anything that is has its relation to our purposes direct 
or indirect. Though in the arts of Pastime, the fine arts, 
we aim to do nothing with the things created, they will 
inevitably do something with us; and we have the right to 
demand that this something shall at least be nothing bad 
— preferably it should be something good. They must not 
be harmful; they must at least be innocent, as M. France 
implies — better helpful. It is evident that a work of fine 
art — one created to give pleasure by the immediate im- 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 31 


pression it makes on the mind — may have its share 
of harmful effect — for example, the “‘Danse du Ventre”’; 
may be innocent — for example, an arabesque; or helpful — 
for example, “‘the height, the space, the gloom, the glory” 
of Milan Cathedral. Practically the two worlds of the Con- 
templative life and the Active life cannot be kept apart. A 
work of fine art, though made to bring us the good that 
comes from simply looking at it, cannot fail to influence us 
beside and mostly for weal or woe. Assuredly we must see 
that it shall not do away by its effects with the good it 
brings us as a spectacle. Yet the artist is concerned only 
with the spectacle: and with its effects only as these en- 
hance it. 

A thing of beauty ought also to be a thing of use. Ad- 
mitted. The proposition may also be reversed. A thing of 
use ought also to be a thing of beauty. The demand of 
practical men upon artists has its legitimate counterpart in 
a demand of artists upon practical men. A product of use- 
ful art should not in its turn do away as a spectacle with 
the good it brings us by its effects. Practical men may in- 
deed say that we can get on without beautiful things, but 
not without useful things; clumsy make would be a fatal 
lack in a surgical instrument; awkward appearance prac- 
tically none. Artists may retort that it is not worth while 
to get on at all unless we reach in the end what beautiful 
things bring us at once. The part of Mary in the world is 
a good one, and cannot be taken away. She has already 
what Martha is still working for. Another day may never 
come, but now is here. ; 

The complete ideal for all the arts, both fine and useful, - 
was clearly set forth to the passing generation of English- 
speaking people by William Morris in the words, “A joy 
to the maker and the user.” The motto, “Art for art’s 
sake,” is frivolous. A motto, “‘Use for the sake of use,” 


30 MUSEUM IDEALS 


would be imbecile. The cicada of La Fontaine’s fable, that 
lays by nothing for winter, may be a trifler. An ant that 
should lay by and never intend to take out for winter 
would be afool. Anything with which we have to do should 
at once yield and promise joy. If it yield joy and promise 
pain, like a deadly flower, it is but partially perfect, fitted 
to the world as Idea but not to the world as Will, to use 
Schopenhauer’s division of the universe. If it yield pain 
and promise joy, like medicine, itis partially perfect in the 
opposite sense, fitted to the Active but not the Contem- 
plative life. It is wholly perfect, fitted at once to Idea and 
Will, to the Contemplative as to the Active life, only if it 
both yield Joy and promise joy, like the rainbow. 

In fine art, as in all other things, this 1s the limiting case 
of excellence. A creation of fancy ought both to be good 
and to do good. The greatest poetry, Matthew Arnold 
told us, is “‘the noble and profound application of ideas 
to life” ‘“‘ under the conditions fixed by the laws of poetic 
beauty and poetic truth.” Of these two criteria the first 
stipulates that it shall do good, the second that it shall at 
once be good and do good. Taken together they predicate 
a union of Right, Truth and Beauty, the three ancient 
categories of value, into a Summum Bonum. All three are 
forms of joy: Beauty joy felt, Truth joy anticipated, Right 
joy shared. 

The three have been identified. We are told that 
“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.” What does this 
mean? Let us translate the terms into accepted equiva- 
lents: the immemorial definition of beauty, now lumi- 
nously put in Mr. Santayana’s two words “‘objectified 
pleasure”; and the simplest definition of truth “‘the cor- 
respondence of idea with reality.” Are we then to under- 
stand that the correspondence of idea with reality is ob- 
jectified pleasure; and vice versa? Truly, this is not visible 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 33 


at once. Literal Keats’s exclamation cannot be. What 
interpretation can we reasonably put upon it? 

Take again the dictum that beauty and virtue are one. 
As Lotze expounds it, beauty is right incarnate, and right 
is beauty invisible. This we can begin to comprehend. One 
and the same general system of relations between individ- 
ual things, when perceived objectively, is the basis of all 
our pleasure; when analyzed subjectively, proves to be our 
moral ideal. For our present untechnical purpose we may 
seek to express Lotze’s view — in itself a work of fine art 
— in simpler words, and with it that of Keats, without 
perhaps departing widely from either. 

Beauty is truth; because that which harmonizes with 
our experience, conscious or unconscious, is a pleasure; and 
it is harmony with experience in advance of it that we call 
truth. Truth is joy anticipated. Hence the demand for the 
return to nature in fine art. Hence the superiority of imagi- 
native work done “with the eye on the object”’ to adopt 
Wordsworth’s phrase. 

‘Truth is joy anticipated. Let not this conclusion be 
mistaken for the absurdity that all truth is pleasant; that 
no truth can be painful. What it affirms is that truth qud 
truth is a pleasant thing. When the reality occurs of which 
the truth is the idea, its encounter with a mind prepared 
for it is productive of pleasure, however this pleasure of 
satisfied expectation may be swallowed up in the painful- 
ness of the reality experienced. To use Fechner’s phrase, 
the possession of truth is “in the direction” of pleasure. 

Beauty is virtue; because it is the accomplishment of 
desire that is pleasure; and it is action in accomplishment of 
the desires of all concerned in our act, felt and weighed 
against one another as our own, that is virtue. Right is joy 
shared. Hence the demand that a great work of the imagi- 
nation should not alone be profound—express truth — 


34 MUSEUM IDEALS 


but be noble as well — express virtue — is a demand in the 
interest of its beauty; for thereby it acquires the sugges- 
tion of “‘joy in widest commonalty spread” to quote 
Wordsworth again; that is, joy indefinitely augmented. 
It is because the Golden Rule with its phrase ‘‘ Whatso- 
ever ye would” commands the furtherance of desire de- 
termined as the resultant desire of all concerned, that its 
yoke is easy and its burden light. A sure instinct impels us 
to speak of ‘‘the music of the Gospel” and to say, “Our 
highest Orpheus walked in Judea nineteen hundred years 
ago.” 

But beauty is joy felt, immediately and individually. 
The labor of fancy starts in a flush of private pleasure in 
something seen or thought, and advances as the glow ap- 
pears in new matter. How should the mind be able to add 
new beauty to beauty given? A fascinating melodic or 
harmonic phrase drops into the musician’s fancy, perhaps 
after a long interval of silence. Why should there not, on 
the doctrine of chances, a similar interval elapse before an- 
other presented itself? Why should a joy as it were infect 
the mind with joy? Why should a pleasure received from 
without enable a man to build up out of his own head an 
elaborate creation affording added pleasure to himself and 
others? The process is an unexplained riddle of mental 
science, but a fact nevertheless. We do not know How, we 
only know That. A friend of Gray’s waited in the poet’s 
chambers at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, when Gray hur- 
ried up the stairs, dashed into the room, and rushed to his 
writing table, murmuring: 


*“Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! 
Confusion on thy banners wait!” 

The ode he had long meditated had given him its opening 

lines, and he exulted that the spark had caught which 


would insure its progress in a steady blaze. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 35 


*“Chacun a son gotit.”” The blaze starts and spreads in 
very various material in various minds. Different men 
take their pleasure in ways often most strange to one an- 
other. The field of experience, real and fancied, in which 
a man finds and can make his pleasure, determines the 
range of his artistic imagination, constitutes his especial 
message as an artist. Greek art sprang out of an enthusi- 
asm for the human body; Gothic art out of the stimulus of 
an angle. Far Eastern painters and sculptors draw end- 
less motives from the life of animals — their habits and 
their habitat; Western artists are chiefly interested in 
their death — the mortal combat, the chase, the quarry. 
Religious truth awakened Bunyan’s fancy; the cynical 
and the sexual allured Maupassant. Shakespeare seems 
habitually to have written with a mind so heavy with 
thought and quick with passion that he could not stop to 
utter it unless in the fewest and most pungent words. A 
like rapid and pregnant use of language is a trait of Kip- 
ling. George Sand’s style resembles an untroubled cur- 
rent, running strong and full. These differences are a dem- 
onstration of the inexhaustible fertility of art. The worlds 
waiting to be born of the trowel, the chisel, the brush or 
the pen are as indefinitely numerous and various as the 
endowments of nature and circumstance possible to man. 

A certain whimsical member of the Corporation of Har- 
vard University was accustomed, when a case of disci- 
pline came before the board, to move its reference to the 
Committee on Fine Arts, explaining that he had always 
noted an intimate relation between the fine arts and im- 
morality. What is immorality? It is life at the expense of - 
others. The praise of such a life under the phrase “the 
will to power,” Nietzsche called a standpoint “Beyond 
Good and Evil” — “Jenseits des Guten und Boesen” — 
recognizing the “‘transvaluation of all values” with which 


36 MUSEUM IDEALS 


he saw white what the civilized world had hitherto seen 
black. To the rest of us a giant’s strength is valueless if we 
use it like a giant; but even a pigmy’s strength invaluable 
if used for others as one’s self. Is it true that to the mind 
wrapped up in works of fancy, as they have hitherto been 
variously given the world, others’ woe is but a dream — 
“mal d’autrui nest que songe”? Certain facts point that 
way. Had the Greeks of antiquity not had better morals 
than their gods the race would not have lasted long enough 
to invent them. To-day, if French morals were not better 
than those of their novels and plays, the nation would have 
been incapable of the “union sacrée”’ in defence of France 
to which all the world has of late paid homage. 

Three truths — one relating to the work of art, one to 
the artist and one to the beholder — help to explain the 
persistent drift of fine art toward immorality, whimsical 
indeed as the linking of the two may appear to us in the 
end. 

The whole of nature is a theatre of injustice. Leopardi 


wrote: 


**Nature, I know, hears not, 
And knows not how to pity. 


994 


The ultimate material of fancy is a creation groaning and 
travailing together; and if fine art mirror nature, it must 
reflect the travail and the groans. 

Moreover, the“ artistic temperament” is especially prone 
at once to error and to sin, through its very susceptibility 
to be led captive by the moment’s pleasure. The worlds of 
fancy are so terribly beguiling — above all the ideal world 
par excellence, whose inhabitants are melodies and har- 
monies — that they who spend much time among them are 
often sick at heart when they come back to the real one. 


“So che Natura é sorda 
Che miserar non sa.”’ 
G. Leopardi: “Il Risorgimento.” 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 37 


The endowment that can seize and hold beauty — its own 
present joy — even though it consent to labor after truth 
— the joy-to-be of confirmation from without — must still 
rise above itself for right — the joy that neither is nor is 
to be its proper own. 

Finally, there is a mental law by which our sensibility to 
beauty is enhanced by pain, either fancied, or within lim- 
its, actual. From “‘deviled”’’ meats and musical discords to 
the sorrows of tragedy, pain adds a spice to accompanying 
pleasure whose charm certain natures cannot forego. In 
the particular instance of the charm of fancied pain we 
cannot believe that any sentient being feels joy actually 
in others’ suffering. Our idea of the pain that we see or 
fancy others feel, however faint a copy it may be of its 
original, is a pain all the same. The only joy is in the stim- 
ulus which pain attributed to others lends to our own vital 
processes. But the existence of words and phrases sig- 
nifying malignant joy, suggests that some men have 
confusedly coupled their own joy directly with others’ 
pain. Some men have also thought that a state of perfect 
happiness would be a state of utter boredom and hence far 
from happy. Yet to deny the possibility of perfect hap- 
piness on the ground of its tedium is an incredible inepti- 
tude, based on the commonest of logical blunders, that 
of petitio principit, or the assumption of the point to be 
proved. The argument runs — Bliss without alloy would 
be tedious; but tedium is unhappiness, therefore perfect 
happiness would be unhappy, which is unimaginable. The 
major premise here asserts that perfect happiness is 1m- 
perfect, in a word contradicts itself; this assertion being also | 
the conclusion. The supposed argument is simply a reflec- 
tion of its initial contradiction in terms. The truth con- 
fusedly grasped in the process is that happiness for us mor- 
tals soon runs out into ennui. The confusion arises from 


38 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the failure to note that while it exists it is a different thing 
from the ennui which at length may succeed it. We have 
only to break away from our kleinstéddirsche, clock-tower, 
view of the universe as circumscribed to the present estate 
of the genus homo sapiens, to recognize the possibility of 
other conditions and other sentiences in which the advent 
of ennut, if it ever threatened, would be forestalled. Fool- 
ish as is the disbelief in the possibility of perfect happi- 
ness, a mere abortion of a puzzled head, logic may well 
wonder at the number of heads that permit themselves, at 
least temporarily, to be thus puzzled. 

The fact remains that lesser intensities of pain vivify to 
the human percipient the pleasure that may accompany it. 
Tragedy owes its preéminence in fine art to this mental 
fact. Terror and pity, the intensest forms of stimulus to 
the perceptions, have only to be deeply veiled in fascinat- 
ing drapery to bring us a more massive joy than beauty 
ever otherwise provides; as the contrast between “Ham- 
let” and “Titus Andronicus” shows — equally bloody 
plays, but in one the blood-stains covered, in the other 
bare. One must be Shakespeare’s, the other cannot be. 
As a citizen, Hawthorne congratulated “our happy coun- 
try” on its freedom from “gloomy wrong”’; but, as an 
artist, in the same breath called the evil “‘picturesque.”’ 
Tragedy smells of blood; yet in no other way can our pres- 
ent human sensibility to pleasure be so exalted as when the 
pains of death enhance it, and themselves die of their suc- 
cess. 

Nevertheless, — no matter how much “A little dirt 
does set off cleanliness,’’ as Hood’s John Thomas replied 
when his master objected to his thumb-mark on a plate, 
— the pains that enter into works of art are in themselves 
but just so many blots upon perfection, in themselves but 
just so much subtracted from artistic value. We need only 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 39 


conceive disgusting impressions intensified to the point of 
nauseating the beholder, visions of torture to the point 
of shattering his nervous poise, to unmask them as in es- 
sence aliens and enemies to beauty. It is not terror and 
pity, but the love that casts out fear, that leaves us “‘pure 
and prepared to rise into the stars” — “puro e disposto a 
salir nelle stelle.”! ‘Their world reveals to us the sublime 
without its terror or its pity; 
**But while this muddy vesture of decay, 
Doth grossly close us in,” 

it is mortality that touches us deepest — “‘mortalia anumum 
tangunt.”’ | 

Thus the fine arts appear when looked at in relation to 
the rest of life. “Fleurs du Mal,” in so far as Baudelaire’s 
title fits, are not simply noxious; they have a canker at 
their heart. In unmetaphoric language, any features in a 
work of fancy by which it teaches falsehood, or weakens 
our impulses to moral good, are in the direction of ugliness, 
not of beauty. Contrariwise, any features which teach 
us truth, or fortify our regard for others, tend to increase 
its purely artistic value. Innocent beauty, pleasant to the 
taste, but neither nourishing to the mind nor fruitful to 
the will, stands between, at least conceivably: a pure and 
welcome good so far as it goes, but admitting a better. 
The Summum Bonum — best of all — is a tri-unity, dis- 
tinguishable but not divisible into its three components 
Beauty, Truth and Right. 

These fundamental facts the conditions of our present 
human sensibility tend to obscure. We sometimes are ex- 
horted to flee pleasure as if it were an evil. On the con- 
trary, it is the one absolute good. But pleasures, in the 
plural sense of things from which under certain circum- 
stances we gain enjoyment, are often indeed both vain and 

1 Concluding line of the Purgatorio of Dante. 


40 MUSEUM IDEALS 


hurtful. They appear to us sporadically amid groans and 
travail, but they do not keep their promises, and they get us 
into trouble beside. This is not their fault, but ours who do 
not know how to use them. We give ourselves up to them, 
“‘Fancies of good pursuing that are false 
And never yield the whole of any promise.” ? 

thoughtless of what may come after to ourselves or our 
fellows; and since we find them often heightened by little 
-pains, particularly the fancied pains of others, we mingle 
this ingredient carelessly with them, forgetting that it is 
poison and serves a tonic purpose only. Whence we men- 
tally couple fine art and immorality as we might a gem 
with the dark ocean cave that bore it. Whence we con- 
clude that fancy in itself is frivolous or worse; when it is 
only we ourselves who are deluded. 


BEAUTY AND DIVINITY 


We have not completed a review of fine art from with- 
out when we have considered its relation to the rest of life. 
There is another world that constantly recurs to our 
thoughts when they have to do with beauty. We speak of 
the “‘divine”’ loveliness of a statue or a painting or a poem; 
and of the artist as inspired from “Heaven.” A drawing in 
an old number of the Flegende Blatter represents a young 
girl among a crowd dispersing after a concert. Asked 
whence she comes, she answers “‘straight out of Paradise” 
— “Gerade aus dem Paradiese.”’ Non-human faculties and 
non-human conditions are before our minds in using such 
phrases. They refer to another state of existence, another 
life than the present. What is this other world? What 
is the special relation to fine art that these habits of speech 
ascribe to it? 


1 “Tmagini di ben seguendo false 
Che nulla promission rendono intera.”’ 
Purgatorio, xxx, 131-32. 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 41 


To both the two great branches of civilized humanity — 
the East and the West — the world they call better is a 
world in which all souls find peace in the bosom of a uni- 
versal Being. An inscription lately found at S. Sebastian 
in Rome traces the outline both of the Nirvana of Bud- 
dhism and the Heaven of Christianity: ef nos in Deo omnes 
— “and all of usin God.”’ Yet a deep distinction separates 
the two; for the peace of Nirvana is a static peace, the 
peace of Heaven a dynamic peace. The Bhagavad-Gita 
describes a state “in which those who take refuge, never 
more return to rebirth” and its “bonds of action.’’ The 
spirits in Heaven say to Dante: 

**In His will is our peace”’; 
and Milton sees them 
“,..at His bidding speed 
And post o’er land and ocean without rest.” 

Nirvana gives the peace of desire annihilated; Heaven the 
peace of desire fulfilled as it awakens. In Heaven desire 
and fulfilment are fused in “‘the love that moves the sun 
and the other stars” — “Vamor che muove il sole e laltre 
stelle.” + The pain of longing vanishes, the joy of fulfil- 
ment subsists. | 

Every artist creates his own individual type of what we 
call ideal worlds. The tingling air of Harpignies’ pictures, 
the picturesque England of Dickens’s novels, the serene or 
pathetic events of which we are auditors in von Weber’s 
music, are independent, closed units within the beholder’s 
experience. The new-Platonic Ideas of which they are 
made are particular things, they are in this world of ours; 
but they are also universals, not of this world. We cannot 
goon beyond the experiences of which they consist; we can- 
not take up our lives in pictures, novels or music. They are 
different, mutually isolated simplifications of our common 

1 Concluding line of the Paradiso of Dante. 


42 MUSEUM IDEALS 


life: new creations, yet made out of its familiar stuff, out of 
pigments, words, the sound of trumpets. “‘Forever wilt 
thou love and she be fair.”” That is not at all the way things 
happen in this world; yet the fairness and the love are 
integral parts of our everyday existence nevertheless. But 
the common characteristic of works of fancy is that they 
all essay to transplant us amid perfection; the make they 
aim at is that of experiences which awaken desire only to 
satisfy it. This is also the pattern of Heaven. Heaven can- 
not be found by pushing further in this universe. Wherever 
we go, beyond the farthest star, we must assume ignorance, 
clash, unsympathy and interference of desire. But the 
worlds of fancy present us with the fashion of Heaven; 
basing their essential effects, not on clash and disappoint- 
ment, but on harmony and satisfaction. They are not 
Heaven, but they are its vestiges on earth. 

The late Okakura-Kakuzo used to describe a master- 
piece as a work before which one would be willing to die. 
He was not a man given to sentimentality, but the pos- 
sessor of a most acute and well-poised intelligence. What 
did he mean? First, that masterpieces are the limiting 
cases of artistic achievement, the works that can be called 
per-factum—thoroughly wrought— without reserve; fur- 
ther, that life cannot hold for us anything better than 
the experience of the perfect. So far as our private fate is 
concerned, we have lived; for we have loved. The saying 
completes and deepens Mme. de Houdetot’s “‘tout ce qui 
peut armer devrait vwre”’ by affirming that any one who has 
loved is by that fact prepared to die.!_ Indeed, if he must 
lose the perfect thing, and at once, as men often must, it 
may be too much to ask of limited human nature that he 
should wish to go on living. All men born of women know 


1 The whole reported saying is, “La vie ne devrait avoir d’autre limite que 
Vamour; tout ce qui peut aimer devrait vivre.” 


ON THE NATURE AND PLACE OF FINE ART 43 


in their hearts that not fancy but fact couples love and 
death. Rare indeed is perfection upon earth. Yet it is not 
impossible. A thing is perfect when it satisfies, not all pos- 
sible desires, but all the desires it awakens. The capacity 
to satisfy all possible desires, beside being worthless, is an 
unimaginable idea. All possible desires include contradic- 
tory ones, or such as it is unthinkable should be met by 
one and the same object of perception. The word perfect 
has arational meaning only when interpreted relatively to 
a beholder. Absolute perfection is non-sense — the kind of 
mental zero produced by taking a number away from it- 
self. True that a trough that would be perfect to a pig 
would excite in a man a vivid sense of imperfection. True 
also, that as Stuart Mill says “‘It is better to be a human 
being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.’ ! But it would be 
a capital blunder to infer from this truth that discontent 
is always divine, even in a vale of tears like ours. “If this 
were only cleared away, it would be grand,” argued the 
Walrus and the Carpenter walking together on the strand. 
Yet would they have found it so? And if they had, the 
standards of the Looking-Glass population must yield to 
those of this world’s children sporting on the shore, to 
whom a sea-beach without sand would be a most imper- 
fect place. The perfect is that in which we take pure joy, 
but differs in kind according to the measure in which the joy 
is experienced originally or experienced also derivatively, 
as joy foreseen or imputed. These alternatives exhaust the . 
possibilities of value; my own present joy, joy mine but 
not present, joy not mine. The perfect affords joy foreseen 
when it expresses truth, and joy imputed when it expresses 
virtue; the standard of perfection rising by each addition, 
since each connects the percipient in its own way, and both 
together in all ways with the universe of joy. In a word, 


1 Utilitarianism, 1. 


44 MUSEUM IDEALS 


things sometimes reach perfection in this world, sometimes 
satisfy all the desires they awaken, if but rarely among 
men; and of things that disappoint us, in truth the over- 
whelming majority, we may always doubt whether the 
imperfections noted are really lacks for us, or would be for 
others whose standard is higher than ours. In particular, 
a work of art may fill the artist with a satisfaction at once 
pure and superior to any which a discontented critic would 
experience by changing it. Such a work is a masterpiece. 
It is perfection incarnate. To realize that life has nothing 
better to offer us than the sight of it, we have only to be- 
take ourselves to the plane on which it was created. The 
fancy of man is like water, which can make the commonest 
hollow or fearfullest abyss of earth reflect a bit of Heaven. 


One is loth to leave this dazzling theme. Let us glance 
back over the way we have taken. Fine art is the creation 
of beautiful things. Beauty is the charm of things that 
appear happy in themselves. The crowning achievements 
of man’s fancy stand outside him as if they were made by 
another hand. Fine art is a language in the sense of an 
utterance. It differs from a language in that the vehicle 
it uses does not simply carry its message but enters itself 
into the message. On the other hand, the activity of its 
formulation is no part of the utterance; though there may 
be parts of the utterance which none but a hand long 
active could supply. A beautiful thing may be self-lumi- 
nous with pleasure; or it may also glow with pleasure re- 
flected from its truth or its morality. A beautiful thing is a 
link between earth and Heaven, of the earth earthy, in its 
envelope of disquiet, but heavenly in the peace that lies at 
its heart. The queen of the nursery story may be an earthly 
queen of tragedy, but there is a queen of comedy whose 
lineage is divine. 





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II 
POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART? 
EDUCATION 


Three senses of the word “‘education”: the loose sense; the broad sense; the 
narrow sense — Double meaning of process and product in each sense — Con- - 
fusion between loose and broad senses; between broad and narrow senses; be- 
tween senses of process and product — The word “education” to be here used in 
the narrow, but not narrowest, sense of a process. 


Tue word “education” is a very ambiguous one, and 
the parent of much misunderstanding. It conveys the gen- 
eral idea of a modification of personality in three senses, 
which may be called respectively a loose, a broad, and a 
narrow sense. In the loose sense education is synonymous 
with influence, in the broad sense with improvement, and 
in the narrow sense with teaching. 

The loose sense was thus defined by John Stuart Mill in 
his rectorial address at the University of St. Andrews in 
1867: ““Whatever helps to shape the human being — to 
make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being 
what he is not — is part of his education.” Now every 
one of our experiences in life helps to shape us. Some trace 
is left upon us by each. We are somewhat different after- 
ward from what we should have been had this particular 
event not happened. Hence, using the word in the loose 
sense, nothing short of the whole life history of any one 
constitutes his education. ‘Education is life.” ? The al- 
cohol that contributes to make the European what he is, 
and the opium that contributes to prevent the Asiatic from 
being what he might be, are educational forces. Most 

1 Reprinted from the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 


the year ended June 30, 1913. 
_ 2 Symposium on Education, The Brooklyn Eagle (1903). 


48 MUSEUM IDEALS 


readers will meet this claim with a mental revolt which is 
proof that the loose sense of the word “‘education” is not 
the customary one, but an extravagance of speech. Those 
who, like most of us, believe in and wish to forward educa- 
tion, will refuse to admit that it includes all influences, the 
bad as well as the good, the demoralizing as well as the 
elevating. We shall demand that when people talk about 
education in our hearing they shall mean something good 
by the word. They shall not mean such influences as a 
fascinating scoundrel may exert upon a weak-willed com- 
panion, or such as a mental shock exerts over the reason 
it dethrones. Nothing shall be education for us which is 
not an improving influence. 

This second, or broad sense of the word ‘‘education” 
has been analyzed with admirable clarity by President _ 
Hadley. “In the broad sense it [education] includes every _ 
exercise of activity which is valued, not for its direct re- 
sults, but for its indirect effects upon the capacity of the 
man who is engaged therein.” ! Every experience in 
whose result upon the personality we can see the promise 
of future good; every event whose ineluctable trace upon 
us is formative, and neither indifferent nor deformative, 
is part of our education; and only such events are. Using 
the word in this broad sense, Richard Steele said of Lady 
Hastings that to know her was a liberal education. Here 
was a vivid and gallant recognition of a perpetual outflow 
of humanizing influences from a lovely woman. The re- 
mark is quoted also as a tribute of Chateaubriand to 
Mme. Récamier. 

Yet we should not speak of Lady Hastings as an edu- 
cator, nor treat of Mme. Récamier in a history of edu- 
cation in France. There is a narrow sense in which the 
word is most commonly used. Although North American 

1 Symposium on Education, The Brooklyn Eagle (1908). 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 49 


vim has been traced to the dry air of our continent, the 
latest achievements of the United States to the impulse 
given by the freeing of Cuba, and no greater formative 
influences have ever existed in this country than the ex- 
amples of Washington and Lincoln, the United States 
Bureau of Education does not observe and record such 
factors of national progress as climate, crises of history, or 
commanding personalities. Education as most commonly 
understood means more than influence, more even than 
formative influence. It means intentional formative in- 
fluence — the purposed moulding of one personality by 
another. This is the common, everyday root meaning that 
runs through the words “‘education,”’ “‘educator,” “‘edu- 
cational effort,’ “educational appliances,” and the like; 
and this root meaning Mill expressly recognizes in the ad- 
dress at St. Andrews. After defining education in the loose 
sense in his opening paragraph he devotes the rest of his 
discussion to that “which each generation purposely gives 
to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify 
them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising, the | 
level of improvement which has been attained.” Emerson 
uses the term in this customary sense, alluding also to a 
possible broader meaning when he writes, “‘What we do 
not call education is more precious than that which we call 
so.” ! The most elevating influences of all, he thinks, are 
those which are not intentionally applied and so not cus- 
tomarily spoken of as a part of education. People are 
moulded to better effect without formal means than by any 
of the apparatus we call didactic. 

These three senses — the loose, the broad, and the nar- 
row — do not exhaust the ambiguities of the word “‘edu- 
cation.”’ Each of the three has a primary and secondary 
meaning duly set forth in the dictionary. The primary 

1 Spiritual Laws. 


66é 39 66 


50 MUSEUM IDEALS 


meaning is that of a process; the secondary that of its 
product. Education means at once the imparting of capac- 
ity and the capacity imparted; the communication of 
knowledge or skill and the knowledge or skill communi- — 
cated. In one sense it means an operation of which the 
mind or body is the subject; in the other a mental or bod- 
ily condition at which the operation aims. When we say, 
*“'The control of education should be entrusted tothe State, ” 
we are using the word in its primary sense of a process 
which the State should apply to its citizens. When we 
say, “Popular education is vital to a democracy,” we are 
using the word in its secondary sense of a product which a 
democracy needs to develop within itself. 

This manifold ambiguity affords ample room for mis- 
conception. A confusion between the loose sense, in which 
education means influence of any kind exerted upon the 
individual, and the broad sense, in which it means forma- 
tive influence only, lends itself to a fatalistic optimism. 
If every experience is part of our education, then what- 
ever is, is in the right direction. If the world is all a school, 
then all’s well with it literally. A resolute faith that the 
world may be made better gives place to the enervating 
persuasion that its every detail is for the best. We dare 
not prevent anything lest we lose its lesson; nor dare we 
bring about anything, ignorant as we are whether we can 
better what is already for our good. So old-time doctors 
forbade ether in childbirth lest the lesson of its pains be 
lost. Through the use of one word for both improvement 
and influence, the glamour of the one envelops the other 
also. We take up our abode on the borderland of a fool’s 
paradise. 

A confusion between education in the broad sense of 
formative influence and education in the narrow sense of 
intentional formative influence tends to an opposite error. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 51 


‘We are misled into thinking educational effort the pan- 
acea for all the ills of society. In particular, we exalt edu- 
cational effort in its narrowest sense — that of the in- 
fluences directed exclusively upon the young en masse. If 
education — meaning formative influence — includes, as 
in this sense it does, every agency of personal advance, 
then all that need be done to insure the indefinite improve- 
ment of the individual is to look to our system of educa- 
tion — meaning the formal training given by each genera- 
tion to the next. The glamour of the idea of the betterment 
of character concentrates itself upon one of the means to 
this end — and, as Emerson notes, one of the less precious 
means. Our faith in the machinery of instruction becomes 
unconsciously inflated beyond all reason. The school be- 
comes a fetich. We overlook chronic failings of schooling 
at its best; its development of the memory at the expense 
of the intelligence, its comparative impotence to perfect 
the will. “Sir,” said Wellington to his highly instructed 
aide, ““you have too much knowledge for your compre- 
hension.” Of some royal children Henry Crabb Robinson 
writes: “‘These children are overcrammed; they know all 
the sciences and languages, and are in danger of losing all 
personal character and power of thought in the profusion 
of knowledge they possess.”! Again, furnishing the mind 
does not in itself direct the will. In technical language, 
judgments of fact and judgments of worth are mutually 
irreducible. There is no mental chemistry by which I see 
can be transmuted into I choose. However we train the 
mind, unless the heart be independently disposed, we are 
but fashioning an instrument of futility or a weapon of 
evil. But these criticisms of education in the narrow and 
narrowest senses have the ring of lése-majesté to those 
whose enthusiasm is fed by the broad meaning of the term. 
1 Diary, vol. u, p. 104. 


52 MUSEUM IDEALS 


Finally, a confusion between education in the sense of 
process and education in the sense of product helps to- 
ward a fictitious valuation of preparatory agencies. We 
come to cherish training mistakenly for its own sake. It is 
a common human failing to forget the end for the means. 
Mr. Chesterton has said that practical men generally know 
everything about the matter they have to deal with ex- 
cept what it is for. The use of one vocable for both means 
and end favors this shortsightedness. If education, in the 
sense of developed capacity, is the ideal for humanity, 
then education, in the sense of the development of capac- 
ity, is the greatest thing in the world. Yet this is a conclu- 
sion impossible to thinking beings. If the development of 
capacity is the greatest thing in the world, then developed 
capacity is secondary, and since an end takes precedence 
over its means, the development of capacity is tertiary. 
Nevertheless we have just asserted it primary. The way 
out of this self-stultifying tangle is resolutely to hold the 
two ideas of process and product apart, in spite of their 
common name, and clearly to acknowledge that it is the 
exercise of capacity that gives its development worth. 
Schooling was made for man and not man for schooling. 
As President Hadley has said, an educational process is one 
which is valued for the capacity it engenders. Only in 
so far as the built character emerges, as its capacities show 
their development in action, do our efforts in character 
building prove their merit. The good life, and not the busi- 
ness of preparing for it, is the greatest thing in the world. — 

For the purposes of the present discussion of popular 
education in fine art, it will be convenient to use education 
in the sense of process, not of product, and in its narrow 
but not its narrowest sense. So choosing among the am- 
biguities of the term, it will signify intentional formative 
influence, whatever its appliances and whoever its sub- 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 53 


jects. Artistic education will denote all training in fine 
art, whether given in school or out, to adolescents or 
adults. 


FINE ART 


Fine art the embodiment of fancy for its own sake — Corroboration by artists 
and critics — Two implications: (1) a public; (2) completing the artist — The 
effort of appreciation — Corroboration by artists and critics — Corollaries: 
(1) kinship of public with artist; (2) dependence of artist on public. 


Works of fine art are commonly called creations of the 
imagination. The definition is simple, clear, and unequiv- 
ocal, but not satisfying. Is not a steam engine also a crea- 
tion of the imagination, or a coal mine, or an intrigue, since 
all exist in the fancy of their projectors before existing in 
fact? Wherein does a work of fine art differ from any other 
plan brought to pass? 

In that it is finished when it is Sneed and is put into 
external form only to preserve it. Dante writes: ‘‘Who 
paints a figure, uf he cannot be rt, cannot draw tt ; that is to 
say, no painter could draw a figure unless he previously 
made it in his mind as it ought to be.”’! But a steam engine, 
a coal mine, an intrigue, are intended to be more than they 
are in advance in the mind. They are only begun when 
they are designed and are not done until the design is exe- 
cuted. They who execute them, not being “of imagina- 
tion all compact” aim beyond giving “to airy nothing a 
local habitation and a name.” An artificer in embodying 
his fancy may be inspired by either of two purposes — that 
it should exist permanently or that it should bring about 
something else. In the first case, the work of his hand is a 
work of fine art; in the second, a work of useful art. The 
aim of a work of useful art — a steam engine, a coal mine, 
an intrigue — lies beyond itself, in the flight of trains, the 
payment of dividends, personal fates. The aim of a work 


1 Canzone Xvi: as interpreted by himself in the Convito, rv, cap. 10. 


54 MUSEUM IDEALS. 


of fine art lies within itself — that it should be perceived 
as it has been imagined. However an artist may be gov- 
erned in embodying his visions by what he aims to have 
them accomplish — whether to reconcile himself with 
Heaven, to turn his fellows to good courses, to impart to 
them information outside the work itself, to win himself 
fame, or buy himself bread — it is that in them which he 
puts there solely not to let it die that constitutes its sub- 
stance as a work of fine art. Its artistic content is com- 
prised within what it is and does not extend to what it does. 

The avowal is met everywhere among artists and their 
critics. Goethe wrote: “I sing as the bird sings that lives 
in the branches. The song that must from the throat is a 
reward that richly pays.”! Again, “The wish for applause 
which the writer feels is an impulse that nature has im- 
planted in him to entice him on to something higher,”’? 
that something higher being the sharing of his happiest 
thought. To a strongly religious nature like Cowper 
poetic genius was — 


“The gift 
To trace Him in His words, His works, His ways, 
Then spread the rich discovery, and invite 
Mankind to share in the divine delight.’’’ 


The motive of expression, essential to fine art, has been 
stated in sober and modest prose by our own William M. 
Hunt: Artists “expose their work to the public, not for 
the sake of praise, but with a feeling and hope that some 
human being may see in it the feeling that has passed 
through their own mind, in their poor and necessarily 
crippled statement.” 4 Of Shakespeare, Lowell writes: 
*“*T have said it was doubtful if Shakespeare had any con- 
~ 1. “ Der Haerfner.”’ 2 Kinleitung in die Propylaen, p. 209. 

3 Table Talk. To the same effect, Dryden in his Defence of the Essay of Dra- 


matic Poesy (Malone’s ed., 1800), vol. 1, part m, p. 160. 
4 Talks about Art (1st series), p. 123. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 55 


scious moral intention in his writings. I meant only that 
he was purely and primarily poet.” ! Again, “The ques- 
tion of common sense is always, What is it good for? —a 
question which would abolish the rose and be answered 
triumphantly by the cabbage’’?— the cabbage being 
good to destroy for bodily support, the rose only to enjoy 
while it lasts. 

A work of fine art, according to these avowals, is some- 
thing of which the simple contemplation is worth while; 
and the artist creates it that this contemplation may take 
place. His purpose — that the work shall be perceived 
as it has been imagined — conveys two implications. 

First, there is involved in the conception artist — or 
poet in the wide meaning of zroznt7}s, or maker — the idea of 
a public. Creation, in the artistic sense, implies contem- 
plation. The maker cannot be thought without the be- 
holder. Goethe wrote: “The artist is not conceivable 
alone, moreover does not want to be alone. The work of 
art challenges men to delight in it, and to share their de- 
light in it.” *? Alphonse Daudet has written: ‘The artist 
is not a hermit. However one may seek to retire from or 
lift oneself above the public, it is always in the last analysis 
for the public that one writes.’ 

Second, a work of fine art is an open letter, addressed 
not to particular individuals, but to any who can read it. 
With an outlook as wide as humanity, its aim is reached, 
not by every inspection of it, but only when it is perceived © 
as it has been imagined. The artist is a half-being whose 
complement is the beholder who so perceives his work. 
This perception by the one which duplicates the imagina- 
tion of the other is what is called the appreciation of fine 
art. In printing, when the outlines of one impression are 


1 Shakespeare Once More. 2 Chaucer. 
8 Ueber den sogenannten Dilettantismus. 
4 Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres, p. 151. 


56 MUSEUM IDEALS 


exactly superposed upon those of another, the two are 
said to “‘register.”” In like manner, in order that a work of 
fine art should exist, the mind of the beholder must “reg- 
ister’? with that of the artist. It is the scientific fashion 
nowadays to think of every activity of mind as having its 
counterpart in some special activity of brain — a current, 
or explosion, or however else we may conceive it, of a par- 
ticular kind. Using this convenient theory, appreciation 
may be said to consist in the exact reproduction in another 
brain of certain currents or explosions that once took place 
in one perhaps long since mouldered into dust. It is in this 
perpetual reperformance of a strain that once beguiled a 
single fancy that fine art has its being. 

The appreciation of fine art is therefore at once an inte- 
gral part of it and a definite form of response to its crea- 
tions, namely, the precise echo of the voice that bade them 
live. A work of art does not exist for a beholder who sim- 
ply enjoys himself over it; he must enjoy it. He must 
make himself over in the image of the artist, penetrate his 
intention, think with his thoughts, feel with his feelings. 
Okakura-Kakuzo writes: “An eminent Sung critic once 
made a charming confession. Said he, ‘In my young days 
I praised the master whose pictures I liked, but as my 
judgment matured I praised myself for liking what the 
masters had chosen to have me like.’”’ Again, “The tea 
master, Kobori-Enshiu, himself a daimyo, has left to us 
these memorable words: “Approach a great painting as 
thou wouldst approach a great prince.’”’! The same com- 
parison has been used by Schopenhauer: ‘‘One should look 
at a picture as one meets a monarch, waiting for the mo- 
ment when it will please him to speak and for the subject 
of conversation which it will suit him to choose. One 
should not be the first to address either the one or the 

1 The Book of Tea, pp. 107 and 108. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 57 


other, for thereby one runs the risk of hearing only one’s 
own voice.”! This attitude is that of the understanding of 
fine art in the capital acceptation of that word. The pic- 
ture, the statue, the building, is a sign that something once 
existed in the fancy of another which he was unwilling 
to let die. What was that something? When we have an- 
swered this question aright — always a searching question, 
often difficult, sometimes insoluble — we comprehend the 
work, and not until then. Then, and not until then, do we 
perceive it as it was imagined. 

The testimony of those who know is united on this point 
also. Luther’s estimate of the extent to which a reader who 
would understand literature needs to duplicate his author 
appears in the last writing from his hand. “Virgil, in his 
‘Bucolics,’ can be understood by no one who has not been 
five years a shepherd. Virgil, in his ‘Georgics,’ can be un- 
derstood by no one who has not been five years a farmer. 
Cicero, in his ‘ Letters,’ can be understood by no one who 
has not shared in a large public life for five and twenty 
years. The Holy Scriptures let no one think he has thor- 
oughly digested unless with prophets like Elijah and Elisha, 
with John the Baptist, with Christ and the Apostles, he 
has ruled religious communities for a hundred years to- 
gether.’’? The genuine lover of art, Goethe tells us, “feels 
that he must lift himself up to the artist in order to enjoy 
his work.? In a comment on another remark of Goethe’s, | 
M. Paul Bourget thus describes the temper of apprecia- 
tion: “‘Goethe expressed the principle with his accustomed 
depth in saying, ‘If one have not studied things with a 
partiality full of love, what one thinks about them is not 

worth saying.’ . . . To be partial in the sense in which the 


1 The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, cap. 34. 

2 Quoted in Gedanken ueber Wissenschaft und Leben, Professor Adolf Harnack, 
Int. Wochenschrift fuer Wissenschaft, Kunst, und Technik, no. 1, April 6, 1907. 

8 Ueber Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke, p. 294. 


58 MUSEUM. IDEALS 


Altmeister of Weimar used the expression means to have 
given the artist due credit, to have placed oneself at his 
standpoint, to have associated oneself with his purpose, to 
have demanded from him nothing that he did not intend. 
. .. This power of sympathy marks the true lovers of litera- 
ture, those to whom it is really a living thing.”! Saint- 
Saéns notes that the present generation can neither com- 
prehend nor love the music of Gounod, “regarding it in a» 
false light and giving it a significance altogether different 
from what the composer intended.? The appreciation of 
poetry seemed almost an impossible task to Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. “Hardly any one ever understands a poem but 
the poet... . It fits the mental mould in which it was cast, 
and it will hardly fit any other.”* How fleeting and un- 
controllable our sympathy with plastic and pictorial art 
may be is vividly revealed in Hawthorne’s “‘ Notebooks.” 
Of the Vatican sculptures he writes: “‘It is as if the stat- 
ues kept, for the most part, a veil about them, which they 
sometimes withdraw, and let their beauty gleam upon my 
sight; only a glimpse, or two or three glimpses, or a little 
space of calm enjoyment, and then I see nothing but a dis- 
colored marble again. The Minerva Medica revealed her- 
self to-day.”” Again, of Guido’s “Hope,” “If you try to 
analyze it, or even look too intently at it, it vanishes, 
until you look at it with more trusting simplicity.” 4 Of 
the Preludes and Fugues of Bach’s “ Well-Tempered Clavi- 
chord,” Moritz Hauptmann wrote: “They are as difficult 
to hear as to play; and even hearing is not all of it. One 
must know them so perfectly that one can, as it were, 
create them oneself.”* Writing of pictures, John La Farge 

1 From the preface to France et Belgique, by Eugéne Gilbert. 

2 Annales Politiques et Littéraires, no. 1576, September 7, 1913. 

3 A Hundred Days in Europe. 


4 French and Italian Notebooks, pp. 166 and 173. 
5 Briefe an Hauser, 1, p. 2. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 59 


notes that “they are excusable who feel as if they had made 
the work which they admire. They become, for an instant, 
the man who made it.” ! 

Two corollaries of interest result. First, the power of ap- 
preciation in every one is limited to those artists of whose 
natures he partakes. Second, those artists alone rise into 
prominence who reflect the spirit of atime. Of the limits of 
appreciation Sainte-Beuve writes: “According to a very 
acute and just remark of Pére Tournemine, one admires 
only those qualities in an author of which one has the germ 
and root in oneself.” ? Okakura-Kakuzo makes the same 
observation. “We must remember that art is of value 
only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a uni- 
versal language if we ourselves were universal in our sym- 
pathies. Our finite nature, the power of tradition and con- 
ventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts, restrict 
the scope of our capacity for artistic enjoyment. Our very 
individuality establishes in one sense a limit to our under- 
standing; and our esthetic personality seeks its own af- 
finities in the creations of the past.’ Mrs. Radcliffe was 
another to whom this truth was plain. “But the fire of the 
poet is in vain, if the mind of the reader is not tempered 
like his own, however it may be inferior to his in power.”’ 4 
Of the artist as the interpreter of his age, Joubert writes: 
“The writers who possess influence are those who express 
perfectly what others think and who awaken in others 
ideas or sentiments on the point of being born. It is at the 
bottom of the heart of peoples that literatures exist.’ 
Renan concludes negatively: “* Wherever there is no public 
to nourish and inspire genius, it comes to nothing.’’® In the 


1 Considerations on Painting, p. 42. 

2 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits Littéraires, 1, p. 71. 

8 Okakura-Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, pp. 113, 114. 

4 The Mysteries of Udolpho, vol. 11, p. 27. 5 J. Joubert, Pensées, p. 329. 
§ KE. Renan, Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse, p. 67. 


60 MUSEUM IDEALS 


terse saying of the Chinese sage Lao-tse: “If a noble man 
finds his time, he rises; if he does not find his time, he 
drifts.””} 

A last question transfers the discussion of fine art to 
a wholly different order of ideas. Defining it as fancy 
brought into being for its own sake, is its existence justi- 
fied independently of other results? We have here left the 
sphere of what is, and entered that of what should be. The 
transition is obscured in the familiar contention over “‘art 
for art’s sake,”’ which like most disputes, owes its difficulty 
to its complexity. Besides confusing the nature of fine art 
with its value, the phrase compresses at least four ques- 
tions regarding its value into one debate. Should men 
devote time and labor simply to immortalizing happy 
thoughts? Yes. Are the charming aspects of evil things 
fit subjects of fine art? Sometimes; tragedy, for example. 
Should an artist embody his conceptions without regard to 
their influence? He cannot. Are not the most captivating 
fancies and the most consummate utterances always the 
indirect result of useful aims? Not always. But however 
these and other questions of worth may be answered, the 
truth remains that the sole factors of artistic creation are 
a moment too good to lose and a hand cunning enough to 
hold it. Its essence is expressed in the exclamation of 
Faust: Verbletbe doch! Du bist so schin!? (Remain! Thou art 
so beautiful!) The artistic motive, mixed though it always 
is with others, is in itself the impulse to impart imagina- 
tive joy for its own sake. 


EDUCATION IN FINE ART 
Education in fine art may aim to form either artists or publics. 
The content of a work of fine art is the imaginative joy 
to which it owes its being; and in the apprehension of this — 
1 Tao-te-King, 600 B.c. 2 Goethe’s Faust, 1st part, Studterzimmer. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 61 


content by a beholder the work is consummated. Fine art, _ 


being in its entirety the union of creating and beholding, 

offers to education a tw ofold opportunity. Formative 
‘influence may be applied by intention either to develop 
creators or to develop beholders. The purpose to develop 
creators is narrowly special. Poets are born, not made, 
and their ratio to the total of births is always small. Nor 
could a large proportion of the community be spared from 
the realities of life to devote themselves to imaging its 
ideals. As a matter of actual statistics, those who make 
fine art in any form their profession, whether as artists or 
so-called artisans, are but a minute fraction of the whole 
population. But the purpose to develop beholders is widely 
general. Every one can be, and in greater or less measure 
is, a beholder of works of art. ; 

Every one ought also, in his way, to be an artist. Let us 
not forget this. All work should be accomplished with joy 
that a good deed is born into the world and should contain 
something to communicate that joy. But in this wide and 
unaccustomed sense education in fine art would merge 
into the education that teaches us how to do anything 
noticeably well. When it stops short of this it remains the 


~ 


special training of a few. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 


Popular education in fine art the formation of publics — Fine art surrounds 
real life with an endless galaxy of ideal worlds, citizenship in some of which is 
the birthright of every one — Popular education in fine art should not be mainly 
technical, nor historical, but critical — A scheme of popular education in fine art 
through criticism. 


Hence, popular education in fine art, meaning by this 
“phrase an artistic education which is owed to every one, con- 

~~ sists informing beholders. The phrases “education in ap- 
preciation,” “‘teaching the enjoyment of works of fancy,” 
express its appropriate sphere. The advice of Aristotle 


62 MUSEUM IDEALS 


regarding training in music was, “Let the young pursue 
their studies until they are able to feel delight in noble 
melodies and rhythms.”! They were to be trained not to 
make but to like; not as poets but as lovers of poetry. 
The injunction still demands emphasis. Fenollosa writes: 
‘“< . . We find prevalent discussions and experiments con- 
cerning the teaching of art in schools so permeated with the 
tacit assumption that its main purpose is to provide an 
incipient training for possible painters and sculptors, that 
warning seems necessary. This is to lose sight of the great 
public value of art. Is it for this that we teach so widely 
the other fine arts — music and literature? Do we aim, 
by our musical instruction in schools, in time to train up a 
nation of eighty million composers? Are our courses in 
literature devised to transform us into a community of 
poets? Public education in art does not look so much to- 
ward creation as to comprehension.’ ? In another sphere 
Aristotle’s counsel has been lately voiced by President Wil- 
son. “‘A university is a place where the many are trained 
to a love of science and letters, and a few only to their suc- 
cessful pursuit.” 

That the many should have their share in the life of the 
imagination, and hence have theright to receive aid therein, 
admits of no serious doubt. The real experience of no one 
is so rich that he can afford to dispense with imaginative 
experience; nor so poor that he cannot take advantage 
of it. Uhland writes: ““Who sees alone what is, has lived 
his life.”” > Yet what is fine art, it may be asked, but a copy ~ 
of nature? Were it not better to study the original rather 
than reproductions that never can equal it? The objection 
betrays a radical misunderstanding of the relation between 


1 Politics, vin, 6. 

* E. F. Fenollosa, “Art Museums and their Relation to the People,” The 
Lotus, May, 1896. 

3 “In ein Stammbuch.” 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 63 


art and nature. Fine art is to be compared, not to a mirror, 
giving back as close a copy as may be of the scenes before 
it, but to a sky in which new counterparts of earth eternally 
appear. It is an exhaustless firmament about the real 
world, incredible as may sometimes seem the endless birth 
of new luminaries therein. John Stuart Mill relates that 
at one period of his early life “‘I was seriously tormented by 
the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. 
The octave consists only of five tones and two semitones, 
which can be put together in only a limited number oi 
ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful; most 
of these, it seemed to me, must have been already dis- 
covered, and there could not be room for a long succession 
of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these had done, en- 
‘tirely new, and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. 
This source of anxiety may perhaps be thought to resemble 
that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun 
should be burnt out.’’! It is indeed hard for us now to 
share in the fear. For we look back upon the immense de- 
velopment of music since Mill wrote, upon Verdi, upon 
Wagner, upon Debussy; and out upon the musics of other 
continents, with their unheard-of complexities of rhythm, 
their differing tones and semitones, their alien keys and 
modes, their independence of the octave itself. As each 
true servant of the imagination is born, a new type of 
ideal existence adds itself to real life for every kindred 
soul. When we turn from nature to art we take our way 
into happy worlds which gifted men have formed and 
are ever forming anew from the materials of this sorrow- 
ful earth, as the kaleidoscope forms figures from its bits 
of glass. 

Popular education in fine art, if directed as it shouldbe 
upon the development of comprehension, will include but 
pt? 1 Autobiography, chap. v. 


64 MUSEUM IDEALS 


a modicum of technical instruction. More would be use- 
less, and even defeat the aim pursued. The problems and 
methods through which an artist struggles form no part 
of the imaginative joy he seeks to impart. They are but 
means to that end. The scaffolding is not a part of the 
building, nor the stage-machinery of the spectacle. Tech- 
nical knowledge aids a beholder only if it bring to his at- 
tention elements in a work for which his eyes are too dull. 
It is at the same time a hindrance by diverting his mind 
from the work itself. Francesco d’ Ollanda reports Michel 
Angelo as saying, “What one has most to work and strug- 
gle for in painting is to do the work with a great amount 
of labor and study in such a way that it may afterward 
appear, however much it was labored, to have been done 
almost quickly and almost without any labor, and very 
easily, although it was not.’’! Unless the Latin maxim 
Ars est celare artem is mistaken in demanding that a be- 
holder should not follow the poet at work, pedagogic theory 
is mistaken in demanding that he should. Not artists, im- 
mersed as they must be in technique, are the best critics, 
but “‘those who have failed in literature and art” as Lord 
Beaconsfield wrote in Lothair; or, as it may be added, 
those who would have failed had they not known better 
than to try. The true beholder, in the words of Herr von 
Seydlitz,is he “‘who can partake in the joy of creation, 
while sparing himself its travail pains.”’? 

Neither will education in appreciation assign a large 
place to the history of art. Its study is a study of the rela- 
tions between the artistic monuments of different times. 
The comprehension of art is the study of these monu- 
ments themselves. No two objects of attention can well 


1 Third Dialogue on Painting with Michel Angelo. Quoted in Michel Angelo 
Buonarroti, by Charles Holroyd, p. 326. 

2 R. von Seydlitz, Monatsberichte ueber Kunst-Wissenschaft u. Kunst-Handel 
(February, 1901), p. 223. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 65 


be more different than a relation and the objects between 
which it holds. It will be said, different as they are, know!- 
edge of the one helps to a grasp of the other. True, to the 
abstract recognition of one or other perhaps unessential 
point. Like technical knowledge, historical knowledge 
offers a crutch to observation. It may direct the eyes that 
need directing; and it may also direct them to no ma- . 
terial advantage. Professor Adolf Philippi writes, “First 
see, then read —for those who need reading, and many 
never need it at all.’’ Professor Carl Neumann advises to 
the same effect. “The historical understanding of a work 
of art is advanced when we look at it in connection with 
other works of the same master and time, and of earlier 
and later times; its artistic understanding is advanced 
hardly a step by the process — at most in that the com- 
parison and contrast of different works sharpens and trains 
the eye.” And again, “‘How often is one asked—... 
‘What art history is to be recommended in order to awaken 
an understanding of art?’ But one answer can be given. 
‘No art history at all. The way to art lies through the in- 
dividual artist.’”! Comparing the content of a work of 
art with the influences it represents, Professor Justi writes: 
“The more one grasps this worth — incomparable, and 
independent of all historical connections — the further 
are removed these side issues.” ? Of the dependence of 
Leonardo on Verrocchio, Mr. Berenson writes: “‘ Would 
the full realization of this dependence help us to appreciate 
and enjoy Leonardo as an artist? No, for the term ‘artist’ 
from the esthetic, the only point of view we may admit, 
signifies nothing more nor less than a summation of works 
of art; and unless we have enjoyed and appreciated these, 
much though we may know about the man, his manners, 
his environment, his temperament, his anything you 
1 Carl Neumann, Rembrandt, Preface. 2 C. Justi, Velasquez, u, p. 271. 


_— 


66 MUSEUM IDEALS 


please, we shall know nothing of the artist.”! For we 
shall know only things related to his work, not the work 
itself; and in the process of relating them to it, joy in the 
work — the essence of its comprehension — evaporates. 
Théophile Gautier wrote, “The necessity of analyzing 
everything has made me necessarily and irremediably 
sad’’;? and La Bruyére had learned the same lesson. 
“The pleasure of criticising deprives us of that of being 
acutely touched by very beautiful things.” As the history 
of art is actually taught in books and lectures, its only 
serious value for the understanding of art begins when it 
ceases to be art history and becomes comment on one or 
another individual work by one or another master — in a 
word, criticism. 

For instruction by criticism is the essential element in 
the teaching of artistic understanding, and should be the 
predominating element in popular education in fine art. 
Criticism in no degree hostile, be it said; for in reality there 
is no such thing as hostile criticism. A hostile critic is a 
contradiction in terms; as if one should speak of bloody 
ermine. The sentence of Goethe just quoted from M. Paul 
Bourget is an unassuming rendering of the magnificent 
words of St. Paul, “Though I speak with the tongues of 
men and of angels and have not love, I am become as 
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” Sainte-Beuve, the 
master critic of the France of a generation ago, often 
quoted with approval a sentence of Joubert: “The charm 
of criticism is the penetration into other spirits.”’* The true 
critic is an alter ego of the artist; loving his work as the 
artist himself loves it, if no less conscious of its imperfec- 
tions. He is the ideal beholder, and it is from him that all 


1 Bernard Berenson, Drawings of Florentine Painters, 1, p. 35. 

2 Letter to his daughter, quoted in the Figaro, 1888. So Renan, Souvenirs 
d’Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 318. 

3 J. Joubert, Pensées, p. 327. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 67 


effective training in beholding must come. On him the 
whole fabric of popular education in art must rest. To 
amplify the problem of Aristotle, How can we win the 
people to delight in noble art of every kind? Not by tech- 
nical training beyond the rudiments, nor by the history of 
art; but by leading them into the presence of noble art in 
the company of those who themselves delight in it. M. 
Anatole France describes the rare joy of “visiting some old 
and magnificent monument in company with a savant who 
happens at the same time to be a man of taste and intel- 
ligence, capable of thinking, seeing, feeling, and imag- 
ining.” + Professor Lichtwark, recounting his experiments 
with school children in the study of pictures, writes: “‘ Who- 
ever does not heartily enjoy art had better leave this kind 
of instruction for others. As well might a person who does 
not care for music give music lessons.” ? M. Emile Faguet 
has this type of education in mind when he writes: “Taste 
cannot be imparted, I repeat.... Nevertheless, if one 
cannot instruct others to have taste, one can show taste in 
the presence of others and incite them to give proof of it. 
... Only incite them, it is true, but strongly incite them. 
. Contact with, and even shock, from a man of taste, 
rouses, stimulates, vivifies, sets in motion those capable of 
taste.... This is not instruction, but intercourse; an 
intercourse not giving taste, but accustoming and inspiring 
others to have it.’”’? No better instances of what M. 
Faguet proposes could be given than his own studies in 
literature. They illustrate in perfection what Matthew 
Arnold has called the highest office of the critic. “Surely 
the critic who does most for his author is the critic who 
1 Anatole France, La Vie Littéraire, 11, p. 28. ‘. 
2 Alfred Lichtwark, Exercises with a Class of School Children in looking at 
Works of Art (Dresden), p. 27. 


$ Emile Faguet, “L’ Esprit de la nouvelle Sorbonne,” Revue des Deux Mondes, 
April, 1911. 


68 MUSEUM IDEALS 


gains readers for his author himself; gains more readers for 
him, and enables those readers to read him with more 
admiration.” 1 So Stapfer compares the critic to Mercury 
— “‘the gods’ interpreter to men.” ? 

Chosen companionship in beholding is the corner-stone 
of an effective popular education in fine art; a corner-stone 
as yet left aside in our educational system. Its accredited . 
surrogates are still, in the main, instruction in the tech- 
nique and history of art; plainly because of two great prac- 
tical difficulties in the way of instruction in its understand- 
ing. The capacity of appreciation is limited in every one, 
among teachers by profession no less than others; and — 
in part for physiological reasons — narrowly limited among 
the young. Those who instruct in the technique and his- 
tory of art throughout the land would be more than human 
could they warmly respond to more than a fraction of the 
creations of the arts they represent. Again, works of fine 
art are the product of brains full grown and fully furnished, 
while the nerve centres of adolescents are but partly de- 
veloped, nor has experience of life cut the nervous chan- 
nels where are stored the materials of fancy, and through 
whose excitation alone the beholder becomes an alter ego 
of the artist. The fire is insufficient in the teaching body 
and the materials to create a blaze in the body taught. A 
wide training in the comprehension of fine art calls for 
teachers far beyond the ranks of the profession; and for 
disciples far beyond the roll of our schools and colleges — 
in every age and occupation. To be really popular, educa- 
tion in fine art must be organized mainly as an addition to 
our existing machinery of instruction. Its task will be to 
offer to the whole population, old and young, the oppor- 
tunity to contemplate works of art in the companionship 


1 Preface to his selection from the poems of Byron. So Henri Lavedan in Le 
Manuel du parfait Critique. 
* P. Stapfer, Shakespeare et l Antiquité. 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 69 


of persons to whom these particular creations make special 
appeal. Such a system would proceed by the formation of 
groups for the study of public monuments of art, of the 
works of literature in our public libraries, of the pictures 
and sculptures in our public galleries and museums of art, 
of current concert programmes, or operatic and dramatic 
performances. It would act through a corps of amateurs 
of art, in the true and etymologic sense, each choosing the 
sphere of his predilection, and held to no service beyond. 
So organized, the whole available culture of the nation 
would be enlisted in the cause of its own extension. 


CULTURE 


The appreciation of fine art is what is called “culture’? — Lack and need of 
culture in the United States — Final ambiguity in the word education — In- 
struction in culture does not insure education in it — Let patience have her per- 
fect work. 


What is the meaning of this often-used and often-abused 
word “‘culture’’? Lord Rosebery has just called culture 
“the intelligent enjoyment of literature,” or, as we may 
interpret him, such an enjoyment as corresponds to the 
intention of the writer.! He was speaking in a university, or 
would, we may believe, have included fine art in any of its 
manifestations. So amplified, the phrase would run,*‘the 
intelligent enjoyment of works of the imagination.” The 
definition given by Matthew Arnold implied a similar lim- 
itation and conveyed the like idea. Culture is “to know 
the best that has been thought and said in the world”’;? 
not to know it abstractly, but “to feel and enjoy” it “as 
deeply as ever we can”’;* tasting its sweetness as well as 
opening our eyes to its light, in the two words of Swift 
made famous by Arnold himself a generation ago. In cul- 
ture we cross the line between the real and the ideal; be- 


1 Rectorial Address at the Quincentenary of the University of St. Andrews, 
Scotland. 
2 Literature and Dogma. 8 Introduction to Ward’s English Poets, p. xxii. 


70 MUSEUM IDEALS 


tween our fortunes and our preferences. We cross the line 
also between the formation of capacity and its exercise; 
passing from preparation to fruition, from life for the sake 
of something else to life for its own sake. Returning to 
President Hadley’s definition of education in the broad 
sense — “‘any activity which we value not for its direct 
results, but for its indirect effects upon the capacity of 
the man who is engaged therein,” culture appears as its 
complementary opposite — an activity which we value not 
for its indirect effects upon capacity, but for its direct re- 
sults. It is the acceptance of an imaginative joy given us 
for its own sake by a man endowed with the rare power to 
offer it. It is that activity of the spirit which we have here 
learned to call the ideal beholding of a work of art. 

Of this ideal beholding some of our latest visitors from 
Europe tell us we of the United States do exceedingly 
little. Concerning his American students in French litera- 
ture Professor Lanson writes: ‘‘ Whenever I offered them a 
subject of study, they said to me at once ‘What must we 
read?’ and when I answered ‘The text of your author’ I 
could notice that they were a little surprised, that the di- 
rection seemed meagre to them” — an attitude due, as 
Professor Lanson finds, at once to “‘an unskilful applica- 
tion of erudition”? and a complete absence in American 
instruction of the exercise called in France “the interpreta- 
tion of texts.”! Mr. Lowes Dickinson writes: ‘“‘In America 
there is, broadly speaking, no culture. There is instruc- 
tion; there is research; there is technical and professional 
training; there is specialism in science and in industry; 
there is every possible application of life to purposes and 
ends, but there is no life for its own sake.” 2 The indict- 
ment is true. It is only in speaking narrowly and having 


1 Gustav Lanson, Trois Mois d’ Enseignement aux Etats Unis, p. 157. 
2 G. Lowes Dickinson, “‘ Culture,” The Cambridge Review, no. 18 (1909). 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 71 


regard to sporadic instances, largely unacknowledged, that 
life in the imagination for its own sake can be said to exist 
in the United States. Every day brings confirmation. A 
prominent artistic organization lately offered a large prize 
for a monograph upon a noted collection of art in the ex- 
pressed hope of eliciting “the standard work of apprecia- 
tion of the collection for all time to come.”’ Since “‘the 
standard work of appreciation”’ of a collection presup- 
poses spiritual twinship between the critic and the artists 
represented, a writer capable of fulfilling this hope would 
unite in his own soul those of Van Dyck, Luca della 
Robbia, the Sung artists of China, or others similar. 
Either the proponents of this contest believed that such an 
intellectual prodigy existed among us, or they had no ade- 
quate conception of what the appreciation of art involves. 
A recent review of a translation of Heine’s poems begins: 
“To readers without some working knowledge of German, 
Heine has always been a mystery and — to lift the veil 
from another of those facts of life well known but seldom 
mentioned — a disappointment.” It seems not to have 
occurred to the writer, despite his air of kindly assurance, 
that a reader without “some working knowledge of Ger- 
man” never has read Heine and is “‘disappointed,”’ not by 
the poet, but through his own inability to read him. As well 
be disappointed with the lark that one has heard only in 
captivity. Two prominent newspapers, one in Chicago, 
one in Boston, extol different books in the words, ‘‘To be 
appreciated this book must be read’’ — as one might say, 
*To be appreciated this symphony must be listened to, or 
this picture must be looked at.’’ Reluctantly we must 
conclude to a notable lack of cultivation among instructed 
people in America. 

For what commonly passes for culture among us is at 
best only instruction; not the activity of apprehending and 


72 MUSEUM IDEALS 


feeling ideals, but the activity of trying to prepare for such 
an apprehension and feeling. Since it is possible to try to 
enjoy all types of creative fancy, though wholly impossible 
for any one to succeed in more than the appearance of en- 
joying them all, a single narrow interest — that of appear- 
ing interested in things of the spirit — has usurped the 
place of the infinite variety of interests which the spirit can 
genuinely nourish. Instructed, the classes which repre- 
sent culture among us are; but not, as classes, cultivated. 
Lowell called the people of this country “the most com- 
mon-schooled [it might now perhaps be added, the most 
college-bred] and the least cultivated people in the world.” 
As a people we sorely need to realize that culture is not a 
making ready for life in the future but a practice of life 
in the present; not work but play; not tepid and supercili- 
ous but warm and gracious; not the issue of spiritual notes 
ostensibly payable on demand, though always in the event 
extended, but the payment of a specie of the soul, as oc- 
casion calls. The world position which the United States 
has assumed within recent years makes the duty of an in- 
ternational culture — of a penetration of the spirit of other 
peoples, a recognition of their ideals, and as far as may be a 
sharing in them — our instant duty. This patriotic obliga- 
tion will be sooner met, we shall sooner take our place with 
intelligence and sympathy at the council table of the pow- 
ers, if we clearly realize that it is of a piece with the real 
significance of the common phrase — the appreciation of 
fine art. : 

A final ambiguity in the use of the overburdened word 
“education” brings the number of its familiar meanings 
to ten. The modification of personality either pure and 
simple (the loose sense), by improvement (the broad sense), 
by teaching (the narrow sense), or by schooling (the nar- 
rowest sense), either as process or product, make up eight 


POPULAR EDUCATION IN FINE ART 73 


meanings; and the processes of teaching and schooling, in 
their two acceptations of the contribution of the pupil on 
one side and the teacher on the other, complete the ten. 
Professor Gildersleeve warns us that ‘‘Education is the 
normal development of the powers that lie in man’s na- 
ture, and is not to be confounded with instruction, which 
merely furnishes the means and appliances of educa- — 
tion.”’! There is, on the one hand, the actual development 
of capacity in the taught, and, on the other, simply the 
use of means toward this aim, apart from success or fail- 
ure. In the one sense education means the activity of learn- 
ing, in the other, the activity of teaching. The question 
“Does education really educate?” signifies by the noun 
the share of the instructor, and by the verb the share of 
the pupil. The distinction has been wittily expressed in a 
new rendering of an old proverb, “You may send a boy to 
college, but you cannot make him think.” The sending of 
our whole people to a college of culture added to our pres- 
ent educational system might still do little to make them 
think. Let it suffice us to be assured that what little it 
should do would be well worth the pains. Professor Nash 
has said: ““We men and women of to-day are standing on 
the verge of a future whose course it is impossible to foresee. 
If we are to play our part through, if we are to follow our 
duty home, we need both a cool head and a warm heart. 
The geologian deals with zons’as an oriental monarch 
with his people’s gold. To the impassioned reformer a year 
is an age. The need of our time is a manhood that shall 
gain a little—just a litthke—of the geologian’s time- 
sense.” ” 


1 Basil L. Gildersleeve, ““The Limits of Culture,” Essays and Studies, p. 13. 
* Henry S. Nash, Genesis of the Social Conscience, p. 2. 






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THE IDEAL OF CULTURE 


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THE AIMS OF MUSEUMS 
THE IDEAL OF CULTURE 


I 
DR. GOODE’S THESIS AND ITS ANTITHESIS! 


AN often quoted sentence from a. paper by Dr. George 
Brown Goode, former Assistant Secretary of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, runs as follows: 

An efficient educational museum may be described as a col- 


lection of instructive labels each illustrated by a well-selected 
specimen.” 


Is this thesis applicable to museums indiscriminately? 
In a museum of fine art, are the labels really more impor- 
tant than the exhibits; or are the exhibits more important 
than the labels? Is a museum of fine art at bottom an 
educational institution or an artistic institution? 

A visitor from another planet might smile over the ques- 
tion whether an institution dedicated to art ought to be 
managed in the interest of science. Yet adherents to 
Mother Earth may be pardoned for the unwillingness that 
some of the best among them have shown to express an 
opinion one way or the other. A decade ago an obituary 
notice of Prince Troubetskoy, Director of the University 
of Moscow, contained the news that he had “‘risked all his 

Beerinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 
vol. rx (1915). 

2 Dr. G. Brown Goode: “ Museum History and Museums of History,” a paper 
read before the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C., December 


26-28, 1888; reprinted in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1897), 
part I. 


78 MUSEUM IDEALS 


popularity by a speech made at a recent meeting of the 
students of the University, in which he said that study 
should be the primary purpose of the University and that 
political or other agitation should be only a secondary 
aim.” The question whether a museum of fine art is at 
bottom an educational or an artistic institution, despite 
its Philistine ring, is one likewise to be treated seriously.? 
Two words in Dr. Goode’s formula should warn us 
against the grievous injustice of condemning as a Philistine 
a writer so active-minded, acute, and liberal. His thesis 
is expressly restricted to “educational” museums whose 
contents are ‘“‘specimens.” Looking further through his 
exposition, we come upon many plain indications that he 
grasped, if he did not consistently pursue, the idea of mu- 
seums non-educational in type, to whose contents the term 
**specimen”’ might not apply. He writes of “fine art col- 
lections, best to be arranged from an esthetic standpoint, 
by artists”’;? and again, of collections of artistic master- 
pieces as “‘shrines” and “heirlooms”;? and again of 
*‘many so-called museums” as in reality “permanent ex- 


1 In the Boston Evening Transcript of October 12 and 28, 1899, the writer con- 
tributed two letters to an animated discussion starting from Professor Goode’s 
thesis. The debate was reawakened five years later in connection with the prep- 
aration of plans for the present building of the Museum of Fine Arts. Careful 
and acute arguments in defence of an artistic theory of art museum management 
were contributed by Professor Mather to the Aitlantic Monthly (“An Art Mu- 
seum for the People,’”’ December, 1907) and to the New York Nation (“A Selec- 
tive Art Museum,” vol. 82, p. 422). The controversy was followed with interest 
in England. In writing from America to the Burlington Magazine of April, 1906, 
Professor Mather accurately defined the issue as the question whether the mu- 
seum of art “should be primarily educational in intent, or whether in its conduct 
the esthetic should have preference over scholastic considerations.” An edi- 
torial article in the Burlington for September, 1908, noted the influence of the 
esthetic theory upon museum arrangement, and drew the conclusion that ‘‘to 
something of this nature it seems likely that the larger world-museums must 
approximate when they begin to be fully conscious of their purpose and function 
in the modern world.” 

* “Museum History and Museums of History,” Report of the Smithsonian 
Institution (1897), part u, p. 76. 

3 “The Museums of the Future,” Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1897), 
p. 252. 


GOODE’S THESIS AND ITS ANTITHESIS = 79 


hibitions.”! Nor did he offer even his latest ideas on 
“museum administration as finished results, but expressly as 
material for critical discussion. Yet the criticism he hoped 
for has hardly taken place. On the contrary, one telling 
sentence of his has been, as it were, preserved in alcohol, 
as a final word on the whole subject. 

What is a “specimen”? Has the idea any opposite? 

We call an object a specimen when we think of certain 
qualities in which it resembles other things. We call it on 
the other hand a unicum when we think of qualities in 
which it differs from any other thing. Now, nothing is 
absolutely unlike anything else; even a hawk and a hand- 
saw are alike in having teeth. Nor is anything absolutely 
like anything else; even two peas differ in their strain on the 
pod. Hence anything we please is always both a specimen 
and a unicum. It is more or less like other things, and 
hence aspecimen; and it is always also just itself and noth- 
ing else, and hence a unicum. But although every object is 
at once specimen and unicum, it may be that we value it in 
either way more than we value it in the other; and this is 
the practical significance of the two words, specimen and 
unicum. A specimen is a thing we talk of and treat with 
reference to its resemblances to other things. Its value, as 
we say, is illustrative, residing in its abstract bearings. A 
unicum is a thing we talk of and treat with reference to its 
differences from any other thing. Its value, as we say, 
is individual, residing in its concrete self. This is the kind 
of regard we feel for individuals par excellence, or persons. 
The feeling of Americans for Lincoln is not admiration for 
a group of qualities — for patience, acuteness, strength of 
purpose, kindliness, homely wit — but for these and count- 
less other traits as they are embodied in the individual life 


1 “The Principles of Museum Administration,” Report of the Smithsonian 
Institution (1897), p. 198. 


80 MUSEUM IDEALS 


we recall under that name. When Olivia catalogued her 
charms — “‘item, two lips, indifferent red, item, two grey 
eyes with lids to them, item, one neck, one chin, and so 
forth”? — she had already divined that the Duke cared for 
her, not as the one woman in the world for him, but as a 
specimen of womanhood. Contrariwise, the passion that 
impels the artist is not a passion for abstract qualities but 
for a concrete object, limitless source of abstractions, as it 
grows under his hand. There is but one Venus of Melos, but 
one Lycidas. There is but one Moonlight Sonata of Bee- 
thoven, and but one Three Trees of Rembrandt, many as 
are the renditions of the one and impressions of the other. 
Thus we speak quite naturally of the friendship of fine art. 
The feeling which the artist’s other half — the true be- 
holder of his work — feels for his creation is in turn unique, 
like the regard we entertain toward a human being. 

When, therefore, we apply Dr. Goode’s formula to col- 
lections of fine art we find it talking nonsense, just as a 
formula of mathematics talks nonsense when applied to 
facts it does not fit. For a collection of works of art is not 
a collection of specimens, but a collection of their opposites, 
namely, unica. More precisely, our primary purpose in 
showing things concrete in aim is itself concrete and not ab- 
stract. In speaking of museums of art Dr. Goode’s thesis 
must be dropped and an antithesis substituted. Their 
essential nature is not that of collections of abstractions 
illuminated for us by examples, but that of collections of 
concrete things introduced to us by ideas. This is the 
antithesis which is needed and which had been recognized 
from the beginning at the museum where the controversy 
started. 

The distinction admits of many forms of statement. 
Museums of science aim first at abstract knowledge, muse- 
ums of art at concrete satisfaction. A museum of science 


GOODE’S THESIS AND ITS ANTITHESIS 81 


is a place of pleasant thought; a museum of art a place of 
thoughtful pleasure. A scientific museum is devoted to 
observations, an art museum to valuations. A collection 
of science is gathered primarily in the interest of the real; 
a collection of art primarily in the interest of the ideal. 
The former is a panorama of fact, the latter a paradise of 
fancy. In the former we learn, in the latter we admire. A 
museum of science is in essence a school; a museum of art 
in essence a temple. Minerva presides over the one, sacred 
to the reason; Apollo over the other, sacred to the imagi- 
nation. | 

Thesis and antithesis follow deductively. An object of 
science being specimen, and an object of art unicum, in a 
museum of science the accompanying information is more 
important than the objects; in a museum of art, less. For 
while both are collections exemplifying human creative 
‘power, in the museum of science the creation is the general 
law represented by the description; in the art museum, it is 
the particular fact presented by the object. Thus, as Dr. 
Goode well said, in a museum of science, the object exists 
for the description; but as he was not yet ready to say, ina 
museum of art the relation is reversed — the description ex- 
ists for the object. A museum of science is in truth a col- 
lection of labels plus illustrations; but a museum of art a 
eollection of objects plus interpretations. 


II 
THE TRIPLE AIM OF MUSEUMS OF FINE ART! 


My points are three: (1) to state the aim of fine art; (2) to 
give the reason why art has this aim; (3) to determine the 
main purposes subserved by museums of fine art and their 
order of precedence. 

1. What is the aim of fine art? 

There are two radically different ways in which we may 
be said to know anything. “Je connais” means “I know”; 
** Je sats,” “I know”; but the first means acquaintance, 
the second information, two very different things. To be 
acquainted with anything means to have experience of 
it; to be informed about it means only that this thing has 
been an object of our thought. Romeo’s exclamation, “He 
jests at scars who never felt a wound,” brings out this 
distinction between acquaintance and information. The 
topic of love had occupied his comrade’s thought, more 
perhaps than his own, but it was his fate alone to experi- 
ence the passion. We say, “Practice what you preach,” 
meaning again that to talk about a matter is a very differ- 
ent affair from living it through. “Let not him that gird- 
eth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.” 
Why? Because the former boasts about an object of 
thought, the latter about a subject of experience. 

This difference admitted, just wherein does it consist? 
In this, that to be acquainted with a thing is to know the 
thing itself; to be informed about it is to know its rela- 
tions to other things. Benvolio and Mercutio knew love in 
all its bearings, in its causes, its signs, its results, but 


1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 
vol..1 (1907). 


TRIPLE AIM OF MUSEUMS OF FINE ART 83 


they had not known the thing itself that springs from these 
sources, has these manifestations, and bears these fruits. 
There is no more fundamental distinction known to man 
than that between things and the relations of things, and it 
is this deep difference that obtains between acquaintance 
and information. To be acquainted with a thing is to have 
enter one’s consciousness the sensations, the thoughts, the 
feelings, into which that thing can be analyzed. The event 
called the battle of Waterloo consisted, among a myriad 
other matters, of the flash of guns, the sight of reddened 
soil, and of bodies of men in movement, the volleys, the 
cries, the efforts, the terrors, the rage, the despair, the un- 
imaginable torture, the dumb approach of death; all the 
infinite abyss of experiences that passed in scores of thou- . 
sands of souls a hundred years ago on the Belgian plain. 
To be:informed about a thing is to turn one’s thoughts 
upon a complex of experiences of which it is composed. To 
know about Waterloo is to learn its date, its theatre, its 
progress, its causes and results, its place in the lives of the 
participants and of the nations they represented; in short, 
to envelop it in any web the thoughts are capable of weav- 
ing with reference to that past event. 

This distinction being admitted and being clear, my first 
point is that the aim of art is to impart knowledge in one 
of these senses and not in the other. The aim of the artist 
is that we should become acquainted with his product, not 
that we should be informed about it. The thing itself, and 
not its bearings, is what the artist is interested in and wishes 
us also to admire. Though we master the whole literature 
of Balzac criticism, yet if we never read one of his works, 
we shall have wholly missed his aim in writing them. Hence 
it is that the artist is called vovn77s, the creator of things. 
For what is a thing, and what is it to create? A thing 
philosophically analyzed is a bundle of experiences, a cer- 


84 MUSEUM IDEALS 


tain combination of sensations, thoughts and feelings, and 
to create is to bring into being the permanent possibility of 
such a complex. This is what the artist does. The aim of 
his creation is that others after him should in contact with 
his work see, think, and feel with his eyes, brain, and heart. 
A work of fine art is, therefore, a record of experience, made 
in order to acquaint others with his experience. It is a 
language made to communicate this experience to whom 
it may concern. | 

It is true that any bundle of experience, any thing, can 
be reasoned about, as well as perceived. We can turn our 
minds from the thing itself — for instance, a work of art 
— to its bearings upon other things. We may not only go 
through an experience, we can also weave a limitless web 
of thought about it. But from the point of view of the 
artist any such web of thought is a by-product of his work. 
The immediate purpose of language, and of fine art as one 
form of it, is to communicate something, not to elicit a 
response. The spectator’s perception of a creator’s achieve- 
ment, his apprehension of all that it was made to be, — this 
itis, that completes an act of creation. The Book of Gene- 
sis records the fulfilment of the creative purpose when aiter 
each day’s work “God saw that it was good.” 

2. Yet a world or a work of art surely must exist for 
something, we may say. This is my second point. Why 
does art pursue the aim it does? This aim, we may admit, 
is to perpetuate a certain experience, to put it permanently 
in the power of others to live over again certain moments 
of the artist’s life. But what for? What is the use to the 
many of this vicarious existence through a few? Shall we 
say to broaden our minds? The question then recurs, what 
is the use of broadening our minds? Not to lose time in 
thinking up further answers, let us call this use, this pur- 
pose, whatever it is, C. Again the question recurs, — what - 


TRIPLE AIM OF MUSEUMS OF FINE ART 85 


is the use of C? Let us say D. Well, what is the use of D? 
Let us say E. Evidently there is no end to this chase, until 
we reach something valuable in itself and not solely valu- 
able through an ulterior use. Either nothing is worth while, 
the whole universe vanity, life not worth living, or some 
things are desirable for their own sake. Such things cer- 
tainly exist. Virtue is one, unless the common phrase, 
** Virtue is its own reward,” is an empty claim. Happiness, 
another, for who asks what use there is in being happy? 

We return, then, to our starting point with a new ques- 
tion. May not the experience which an artist is impelled 
to record in a work of fine art be a valuable thing in itself? 
May it not be that the motive which gives rise to what 
we call the fine arts is the fact that certain of our experi- 
ences, capable of outward embodiment, are too precious in 
themselves to lose? This is indeed the common opinion. 
Emerson repeats it in his “‘Beauty is its own excuse for 
being.””! 

These two conclusions, as to the aim of fine art and the 
reason for this aim, may thus be summed up: 

The Aim. To acquaint others with the product of 
our own fancy (not to develop information about this 
product). 


1 True that works of fine art have value through their fruits, as well as in 
themselves. They are useful, both without the maker’s intention and with it, as 
well as beautiful. Their friendship forms spirit and style, and most are expressly 
designed to subserve ends apart from that of conveying their content — the 
painting, to fill a space upon the court-room wall and rest the eyes and refresh 
the minds of the throng below — the sculptured group to honor and protect the 
dust it covers. Moreover, the intended use of a work of art may be, and often is, 
the chief purpose of the maker, rather than its beauty. Like Demosthenes, aim- 
ing rather at a march against Philip, than at impressive persuasion, he may be 
artisan, the purveyor of means, before he is artist, the creator of ends. Still 
further, the idea of the intended use of a thing may become to us part and parcel 
of the thing itself; the ship may be gallant, the weapon cruel. Beautiful as a use- 
less or noxious creation may be, another at once salutary and more beautiful is 
conceivable, and, as we may trust, actual. But it is the idea only of utility that 
may thus contribute to beauty; the reality remains wholly apart from it. Artistic 
value and practical value differ as the nature of a thing from its effect; beauty 
entering into the work, utility flowing from it. 


86 MUSEUM IDEALS 


The Reason. Because this acquaintance is itself worth 
cultivating (not because it brings us ulterior advantages). 

Here we have two distinctions: 

(1) Between acquaintance with, and information about, 
works of art. 

(2) Between the good they are (exemplified in their 
beauty); and the good they do (their utility). 

Fine art is concerned with the first member of each of 
these alternatives. The creative artist aims that beholders 
should be acquainted with a fancy whose inherent worth has 
inspired its perpetuation. 

3. Upon this understanding of the aim of fine art and the 
reason for its pursuit, what are the main purposes of a mu- 
seum of fine art and what the order of their precedence? 

Returning to the two alternatives just stated, the second 
and extra-artistic member of each still remains to be con- 
sidered. We may, first, not only acquaint ourselves with 
works of fine art as the artist intends, but inform ourselves 
about them; and, second, not only enjoy their beauty, 
which is also his intention, but profit by their utility. 
Hence out of these two distinctions there, emerge finally 
three possible attitudes toward a work of fine art: . 

(1) The artistic; the attitude of the seeker after apprecia- 
tive acquaintance with the work, in accordance with the 
artist’s intention. me \. 

(2) The scientific: the attitude of the seeker after informa- 
tion about the work, independent of the artist’s intention. 

(3) The practical; the attitude of the seeker after results 
from the work, also independent of the artist’s intention. 

The influence of any permanent public exhibition of 
fine art, any art museum as it is called, is exerted upon 
persons taking each of these three attitudes. They are 
represented respectively by three clearly distinguished, but — 
not mutually exclusive, classes of visitors. 


va 


TRIPLE AIM OF MUSEUMS OF FINE ART 87 


The artistic attitude is that of the whole public. The 
one aim common to every visitor is that of appreciative 
acquaintance (with the objects shown). 

The scientific attitude is that of students of history. 
Their aim is information (about the object shown). 

The practical attitude is that of craftsmen (comprising 
artists, artisans, and art students). Their aim is guidance 
(by the objects shown).! 

The question of precedence among these purposes ad- 
mits of but one answer. In a treasury of creative genius 
the creative aim is paramount. A museum of fine art should 
seek first the spread of that appreciative acquaintance 
which 4s the goal of fine art. Subject to this prior duty it 
should administer its possessioris both for purposes of his- 
torical study and purposes of professional utility, both as 
scientific specimens and as technical aids. It is the peo- 
ple at large, whose contemplative attitude toward a work 
of fine art fulfils more or less adequately the creative aim of 
the artist, for whom a museum of fine art primarily exists. 
The archeologist and the craftsman, whose attitudes of 
investigation and emulation respond to no intention on 
the artist’s part, have a secondary, although indefeasible, 
standing therein. : 

This aim of appreciative acquaintance is what a museum 


of fine art exists for. The raison @étre, or reason for the 


existence of anything, is its distinctive purpose; and this is 
also its paramount purpose. When a man sets his hand 


1 Two words of comment on these aims: Both historical and professional study 
may aid appreciative acquaintance, although neither is indispensable, still less 
suffices to ensure it. Both sharpen observation, but five teachers — the eyes, life, 
travel, the historic sense, and art itself — are more helpful than science; while 
skill, if it divert the mind from achievement to method, may even be a handicap. 
Again: no others than technical students take the utilitarian point of view inde- 
pendently; for the spiritual uses of works of art are realized through appreciative 
acquaintance with them, and their material uses are obsolete in the artificial 
environment of a museum, where the sword no longer defends, nor the cup re- 
freshes. 


88 MUSEUM IDEALS 


to making anything, it is because nothing exists availably 
which exactly fulfils the purpose he has in mind. Were 
there such a thing, the work of his hand would have no 
raison @’étre. But the thing he makes may subserve many 
other ends than that which is its raison déire. These pur- 
poses which it meets in common with other things, must 
yield in any conflict on equal terms to its distinctive use, 
its raison d’étre. Else we are preferring what can to what 
cannot be attained by other means, the less valuable to the 
more valuable. | 

It is therefore a misuse of language to speak of anything 
as existing secondarily for its subordinate ends. Noth- 
ing exists secondarily for anything. What it exists for, 
its raison d’éire, its distinctive purpose, is by implication 
its primary purpose. Its secondary and shared purposes 
it accomplishes without existing for them. 


II 
ON THE DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE OF MUSEUMS OF ART! 


Capital stress has in recent years been laid upon the 
educational functions of public museums, collections of 
~fine art either included without argument or excepted 
without clearly expressed conviction. The purpose of the 
following pages is to question the right, thus assumed in 
fact or in effect, to conceive and manage a public treasury 
of art as if primarily an agency of popular instruction. 
According to the Areopagitica, who kills a good book kills 
reason itself. No less the precious lifeblood of a master 
spirit, who kills good painting or good sculpture kills imag- 
ination itself; and neither truly lives where its designed 
artistic effect is held permanently subordinate to an ad- 
ventitious educational end. To preserve and display 
masterpieces of art, while preferring to the imaginative 
purpose of the artist an ulterior aim with which the imag- 
ination has nothing to do, 1s to betray the cause of art in- 
stead of serving it. There is imposed upon museums of the 
fine arts by the nature of their contents an obligation para- 
mount to the duty of public instruction incumbent on all 
museums, the obligation, namely, to promote public ap- 
preciation of certain visible and tangible creations through 
which the fancy of man has bidden his senses follow its 
flight. | 

The argument here offered in support of this thesis may 
thus be summarized. A fundamental distinction is drawn 
between the esthetic, or intrinsic, and the practical, or 
borrowed, worth of things; and it is claimed that their 


1 Reprinted from the Museums Journal, Sheffield, England (vol. m1, no. 7, 
January, 1904), and from Communications to the Trustees of the Museum of Fine 
Arts, Boston, vol. 1 (March, 1904). 


90 MUSEUM IDEALS 


artistic quality is a species of the former, and their educa- 
tional value of the latter. Museums are defined as per- 
manent exhibitions of objects gathered because possessing 
either artistic quality (museums of fine art) or educational 
value (museums of science or the useful arts). From these 
two propositions it follows apodictically that museums of 
art and museums of other kinds differ radically as institu- 
tions of sxesthetic, or appreciative, and practical, or in- 
structive aim respectively. Four ways in which fine art, 
while aiming at appreciation, may result in instruction, are 
then examined; and in closing, three reasons are given why 
its educational by-product should in many minds over- ; 
shadow its proper artistic yield. | 

It is here sought, in a word, to establish a conception of 
the essential functions of public museums which shall duly 
recognize the fundamental distinction between art and sci- 
ence — the purpose to present and the purpose to inform; 
between concrete and abstract, imagination and reason. 

Anything we have to do with may either be to us or 
bring to us a valuable experience; may have worth either 
by its nature or its issue. We plant flowers for their own 
sake; grain for a harvest. In the first case a thing has value 
in itself; itisanend. Inthe second case it has value through 
other things, to which it is the means. In speaking of things 
perceived by the senses, we may, by interpreting the two 
words esthetic and practical according to their etymologi- 
cal meaning (aic@dvoya, to perceive by the senses, and 
mpaoow, to bring about) call the former esthetic, the latter 
practical value. An esthetic object, in this sense, is one 
which needs, to justify its existence, only adequate ap- 
prehension; a practical thing is one which approves itself 
through some valuable outcome. 

Of the two fundamental forms of value, a work of fine 
art may have both; but the one casually, the other es- 


DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE 91 


sentially. The distinction between fine and useful art rests 
upon the possession by the former of esthetic qualities; 
that is, qualities which give a thing worth simply as an 
object for our perceptive faculties. The value of a work of 
fine art as end and not as means, its immediate, underiva- 
tive worth as mere incorporate vision, pure object of con- 
templation, is that by which it came to be, that to seize and 
perpetuate which its maker created it. To be seen in its 
perfection is the whole of what a work of art as a work of 
art was made for. It was brought forth to transfer a cer- 
tain perceptive and emotional content, often more than is 
consciously apprehended by the maker, to the soul of a 
beholder through his senses. The constitutive aim of every 
work of fine art, beyond which as an art-work it has none, 
is worthily to occupy the powers of apprehension; to bring 
before other eyes, to transplant into other minds and hearts 
what was, before the work existed, the passionate secret of 
the creative faculties of a single man of talent. The ulti- 
mate end of every art work is to be beheld and felt as it was 
wrought, and this end it fulfils whenever any one stands be- 
fore it and perceives init the artistic content it was made to 
convey, enters into the soul of the artist through the gate- 
way of his work. Creation and appreciation, formation in 
one spirit: and reconstruction in another, are the two poles 
between which lies the whole sphere of art. The whole life 
history of an art work is summed up in its birth in the 
imagination of an artist, and its rebirth through the senses 
of a beholder. Art is of the nature of an open communica- 
tion, not of abstract notions but of concrete fancies, from 
the artist to all others whom it may concern. When an 
art work has said its say, its mission as an art work is ac- 
complished, save as it forever repeats the same message. 
However many and important the external ends it may 
subserve, it was brought forth for none of them, but to 


92 MUSEUM IDEALS 


mirror itself in new minds endlessly. The spread of a 
friendship with itself is its aim; the useful results of that 
friendship, however worthy they may be, form no part of 
its essential purpose. Fine art responds to the needs, not 
of our active existence, but of the contemplative life. 

Any collection of objects permanently preserved for 
the observation of spectators forms a museum. Objects 
may be collected and exhibited either on account of their 
zesthetic or their practical value. A collection restricted to 
works of art is one in which the criterion of selection is 
zesthetic quality, higher or lower. Any object that has 
none is not a work of art. In a collection of scientific speci- 
mens or technical appliances it is a practical quality that 
is the basis of choice. Unless an object possess some in- 
structive value it has no place in a museum of science or 
industry. The fundamental distinction between these two 
principles of selection defines two radically different types 
of the permanent public exhibitions we call museums. The 
limiting purpose of the one is esthetic, and in particu- 
lar artistic; that of the other practical, and in particular 
didactic. An art museum is a selection of objects adapted 
to impress; a scientific or technical museum is a selection 
of objects adapted to instruct. 

By no liberality in the definition of the word educa- 
tion can we reduce these two purposes, the artistic and the 
didactic, to one. They are mutually exclusive in scope, as 
they are distinct in value. 

They are mutually exclusive in scope; for education,. 
according to received usage, is “the imparting of knowl- 
edge or skill’’; in other words, the inculcation of habits of 
thought or action; or, still more briefly, the moulding of 
personality. The term refers to the spiritual or bodily 
effect of a course of experience, be its nature what it may. 
It means that a certain chosen character is impressed upon 


DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE | 93 


us; that we are approximated to an ideal of personality, 
shaped to a model, formed asin a mould. Artistic compre- 
hension, on the other hand, is the pure use of the percep- 
tive faculties upon an object of human creation; it is the 
seeing of a thing as its maker saw it, in a measure it may be 
unknown to himself. The term refers to the nature of our 
experiences, be their effect upon us what it may. It means 
that the mind rests in its object, simply and fully behold- 
ing it, without deserting it for any other interest whatever. 
The nature of anything and the effect of anything being 
two wholly different matters, the two aims, that of artis- 
tic comprehension and that of instruction, exclude one an- 
other. The former seeks to give us experiences of a certain 
kind; the latter to give us experiences having a certain re- 
sult. The esthetic purpose, the aim of art, is to engage the 
powers; the didactic purpose, the aim of education, is to 
modify them. Where the sphere of education begins, the 
sphere of art ends. 

Again, the exercise of artistic comprehension has a value 
wholly distinct from any educational worth it may possess. 
It is the contemplation of an object worthy to be contem-. 
plated; the seeing of it as its maker saw it when he found 
it good. An artistic thing has value for perceptive purposes 
pure and simple, independently of any others, whether 
instructive or not. Its worth differs from that of an in- 
structive object in that it is immediate instead of prospec- 
tive. The educative worth of our experiences is hypothet- 
ical, being dependent on a future exercise of the powers 
they shape; their esthetic value is actual and not hypothet- 
ical, being that of the present exercise of the powers they 
employ. Art is an end, education a means to an end. The 
office of an art museum is one which is warranted in itself; 
that of an educational museum is one whose fruits are its 
warrant. 


94 MUSEUM IDEALS 


Thus neither in scope nor in value is the purpose of an 
art museum a pedagogic one. An institution devoted to _ 
the preservation and exhibition of works of the fine arts is _ 
not an educational institution, either i in essence or ‘in i its 
claims to consideration. While museums of science or of — 
useful art are a part of our educational system, institutions 
auxiliary to our schools, our colleges and our universities, 
aiming at the diffusion of information about the sciences 
and arts to which they relate, museums of fine art are a 
part of our artistic life, serving the cause, not of any utility, 
pedagogic or other, but of art itself. They are institutions 
auxiliary to that public display of creative genius in the 
construction and adornment of public buildings and other 
monuments, which is the first duty of living art to the 
place of its birth. In their chief function, it is theirs to _ 
gather up the art of the past, whose public no longer ex ET 
and offer hospitality to the art of foreign lands, whose 
public is another than ours. They are instrumentalities 
by which civilization provides that neither shall antique 
art be lost, nor exotic art be non-existent to us. The dis- 
tinctive purpose of an art museum may be precisely de- 
fined as the aim to bring about that perfect contemplation 
of the works of art it preserves which is implied in their 
production and forms their consummation. 

But while this esthetic office, proper to a collection of 
works of fine art, is fundamentally different from the 
didactic function for which other museums exist, there are 
still three ways in which the former attains or may ay be ap-__. 
plied to pedagogical ends, as well as a fourth i in which it __ 
can ald its own_artistic aims by educational means. 

In the first place, the appreciation of art is itself an edu- 
cational influence. It should be noted that this is not be- 
cause, like all other experiences of life, those of an esthetic _ 
kind must be supposed to leave the personality in some 


eel 


DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE 95 


degree other than they found it. Experience is not on this 
account didactic. To be didactic it must not simply alter 
the personality, it must shape it to some model. Apart 
from the belief that life is all a school, a peasant is not as 
fully educated as a prince, although the former is subjected 
to a whole lifetime of trace-leaving experiences, and the 
latter to no more. For many more ideals, many more 
shaping purposes, have worked through the experiences of 
the prince than through those of the peasant. Likewise art 
is educative only in so far as there exist ideals of personality 
which work upon us through its creations: But since they 
are the product of the happier moods of more gifted peo- 
ple, it is fair to assume that in their assimilation we shall 
tend to be made over in the likeness of what is best in hu- 
man endowment. In this view of art it is one of the ways 
in which the good word is passed among the children of 
men. It is one of the means by which the more fortunate 
few can permanently impress upon the less fortunate many 
some of their own excellencies. Itis one of the ways in which 
character teaches by example. Artistic insight is a form 
of the inter-action of personality to which moral feeling 
offers the complement; since by appreciation we enter into 
the joy of another, as by sympathy into his pain. In art, 
the material of man’s experience is re-wrought nearer to 
his heart’s desire. It is a new world, of preferences, satis- 
factions, and ideals, set beside the old indifferent or sor- 
rowful reality. From its contemplation we come as from 
a respite, strengthened for that from which it has brought 
relief; and endowed, moreover, with new patterns in the 
mind to which to approximate the life. The paradise of 
artistic creation is not hung in the heavens like an Olympus 
detached from earth, whose divinities have no thought for 
human kind. It has its consoling and inspiring outlook 
also, upon every-day reality. 


96 MUSEUM IDEALS 


True. But while artistic appreciation may thus be form- 
ative in effect, it is not to be overlooked that artistic cre- 
functional, not an organic purpose. Its objets is not snedions 
ate, but direct. It aims at a use of the powers, and not at 
their development. It seeks not to prepare us for life, but 
to make us live.. While didactic results flow abundantly 
from sesthetic purposes, they are a thing apart from those 
purposes, not an element in them. To seek instruction _ 
from works of art is not to accept them as sesthetic prod-_ 
ucts, but to defeat_their artistic aim in the measure in 
which our minds are divided between what they are and 
what we can gain from them. The value to which they owe 
their being is their own proper value as episodes in a life — 
in the ideal. The artistic impulse is not one which seeks to 
apply the salutary, but one which aims to embody the 
perfect; and it is in the completest fulfilment of this aim, if 
we may so far vary a dictum of high authority, that art 
comes to move among ideas of noble and profound ap- 
plicability to life. 

In the second and third places, works of art have a_ 
function both in the promotion of historical learning and 
the development of technical skill. They are facts and 
bases of inference in the study of man and his past; and 
their scrutiny and imitation are means of instruction to 
those who are seeking command of the like instruments of 
eesthetic expression. To students both of the humanities — 
and the practice of art, the study. of works of art is an 
indispensable aid. 

True. But while it is both possible and desirable to apply 
the contents of an art museum to educational ends, and 
while it may often be that a given art work has more in- 
structive than artistic value, it is not its instructive value _ 
that makes of an object a'work of art. Thus to use art 


DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE 97 


works is again not to use them as they were created to be 
used, but for another than their native purpose. Not the 
investigator, not the craftsman, but the beholder — the 
sight-seer, in the strict and full acceptation of that word 
— is he for whose benefit art in its totality exists. To be 
appreciated is its whole end and aim, the fruition of all 
artistic effort; and neither the moulding of character, the 
furtherance of historical knowledge, nor the advancement 
of technical skill. As a work of the art of poetry, the 
Divina Commedia was not written to promote the inter- 
ests either of religion, or scholarship, or literature, but to 
~ endow the world with immortal visions. As a pedagogical 
appliance, an exercise in Latin prose composition is not 
devised to fill the mind and heart with its message, but 
to be studied and manipulated grammatically and rhetor- 
ically. To peruse the exercise as a romance of Caius and 
Balbus, or to parse and critically and philosophically ana- 
lyze the Commedia, is to use neither in the way it was 
meant to be used; and the like principle holds of material 
creations. While in a museum of science or of industry the 
student and not the sight-seer is the personage of first 
importance, in an exhibition of fine art the scholar_of 
whatever name, indefeasible as his rights are,must_in the _. 
last analysis yield precedence to the visitor pure and 
~ simple. | 
In the fourth place, an art museum can, and as a matter 
of fact must, to fulfil its own proper purpose as a treasure- 
~ house of the art of bygone times and far-off peoples, per- 
form a special educational work. While it is far from being 
able to do all that-is necessary to enable its visitors to take 
the point of view of other civilizations, it can still do much 
to this end, and what it can do it should do. It is true 
that the capacity to comprehend works of art is in no 
small degree a matter of native endowment. Yet in its 


98 MUSEUM IDEALS 


measure it both needs and admits of aid. The right kind of 
instruction will almost always augment the power of a given 
person to see what the maker of a given work meant by it; 
although no amount of training will enable some persons to 
see what others can see without training at all. Without 
overestimating the degree in which the information of the 
public will render it more accessible to an artistic message, 
the principle is evident that a liberal use of educational 
means is indispensable to the proper esthetic purpose of any 
collection of artistic objects, and is therefore to be included 
among its duties. 

True. But it is not to be overlooked that this conclusion 
gives to any didactic machinery but an auxiliary place in 
such a collection. The label, the catalogue description, the 
spoken interpretation of a museum object are not the su- 
periors of the work they refer to; they are its servitors, 
whose whole function is accomplished when they usher the 
visitor into a royal presence. It is to the permanent dis- 
play of things existing by the divine right of their immedi- 
ate and inherent worth that a museum of art is devoted; 
and under its auspices the aim of instruction remains 
essentially subordinate to that of esthetic comprehension. 
In so far as the frequenters of an art museum are in this 
fourth way its pupils, it is to the ultimate end of becoming 
better visitors therein. 

The conclusions of this discussion may be summed up in 
the statement that while museums of other kinds are at 
bottom educational institutions, a museum of fine art is 
not didactic but esthetic in primary purpose, although 
formative in its influence, and both admitting of and 
profiting by a secondary pedagogical use. The true con- 
ception of an art museum is not that of an educational in- 
stitution having art for its teaching material, but that of an 
artistic institution with educational uses and demands, 


DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE 99 


This thoroughgoing distinction between the two kinds 
of museums, artistic and educational, a distinction based 
on the two types of value, zsthetic and practical, char- 
acteristic of their contents respectively, is apt, in Anglo- 
Saxon countries at least, to pass unrecognized. We are apt 
to think and to speak of all museums indiscriminately 
as educational in their controlling purpose; a fundamental 
error which may be ascribed to at least three causes: 

First: To the manifest importance of the educational 
uses and demands of public exhibitions of fine art. 

_ Beyond question, the friendship of fine art is in the 
noblest sense a liberal training; undoubtedly, works of the 
art of the past are object lessons in antiquity, and master- 
pieces models for the formation of style. Yet to conceive 
of fine art as model, or lesson, or training is not only to 
ignore its essential nature, but to contribute to the per- 
petuation of that ignorance. For under this misappre- 
hension, effort after an acquaintance with art, though it 
may be active in formative years, when the content of art 
works cannot be fully grasped, will be apt to relax in the 
period of maturity to which alone art is addressed. Early 
familiarity with fine art is never its comprehension; that 
which is the expression of vigorous intelligences in the ful- 
ness of their powers can be understood only by minds of 
corresponding development aided by an experience equally 
ripe. What art really is, what exhibitions of art are really 
for, can be but imperfectly realized where the study of art 
works is left to adolescents and regarded as an occupation 
for immature years. 

On the other hand, through the realization of this very 
truth, the importance of an adequate preparation for the 
comprehension of fine art may come to overshadow in our 
minds that of the comprehension itself for which it exists. 
No less evident than the educational use of art is the im- 


100 MUSEUM IDEALS 


perative demand for some interpretation of art works, 
especially those antique or exotic in origin, in order to 
make them tell upon the public. Originally gathered for 
private pleasure, it is only since the eighteenth century 
that collections of fine art have developed into the founda- 
tions for public benefit we know as museums; and it is very 
much more recently that the old habitudes of their man- 
agement for the advantage of the expert have given place 
(as in the case of public libraries) to the serious study of 
how best they may be utilized for the people generally. To 
this new end all possible means of public information are 
an evident essential, since, unless by rare exception, it is 
only those in whom native taste has been reinforced by 
more or less instruction who can hope even approximately 
to realize in themselves what the art works of far-off lands 
and bygone times have been to the race from which they 
sprang. In our zeal for such instruction we forget and per- 
haps deny that this realization is its final warrant in a 
museum of art. 

Second: The immensely increased dependence of civi- 
lized nations upon communication by reading and writing 
has in modern times acted to weaken their powers of specif- 
ically artistic comprehension. Art in itself is apt to in- 
terest the educated of the present day less than learning 
about it; and hence the promotion of the latter easily ap- 
pears the more valuable end of the exhibition of art works. 
For in truth, painting, sculpture, architecture, and their 
derivatives, speak only to those not bound to the abstract 
content of the conventional symbols of language, but free 
to feed their minds upon concrete objects of sense. In 
science, the history of instruction during the past genera- 
tion has been a sharp struggle to overthrow the domi- 
nance of book learning in the curriculum, to substitute the 
methods of the laboratory for the reliance of our foregoers 


DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE 101 


upon the printed page. In matters of art, likewise, the 
instinct of the modern literate public has been to believe 
that what cannot be written in a book, or told in a talk, 
either does not exist or need not be seriously considered. 
Hence a tendency to rate the scientific investigation or 
literary interpretation of art as at least the sufficient sur- 
rogate of appreciation, if not its higher end; hence a blind- 
ness to that really unspeakable element in works of fine 
art which constitutes their core and essence, which is all 
that led their makers to take up the brush and the chisel 
rather than the pen. For the full public realization of the 
specific province of art, there is still demanded a move- 
ment away from books on art, and toward the facts of art 
like that just accomplished in science. 

Third: Most of those who begin to theorize upon fine 
art at all, especially among our own race, tend to regard it 
as didactic rather than esthetic, both in nature and in 
value; nor is it difficult to give reasons for the fact. Ours 
is preéminently a practical time and practical race. We 
are not inclined to rest in anything; we tend to judge things 
wholly by their outcome. The good which a thing pos- 
sesses in itself, its zesthetic quality, its actual value, is 
habitually, by the twentieth century, the Anglo-Saxon 
consciousness, subordinated to the good it promises, its 
practical importance, its possible value, in knowledge, 
skill, personal consideration, money or whatever else 
of worth it may bring. “Quw’est ce que cela prowve ?”’ said 
even the French mathematician, after reading Racine’s 
“Tphigénie”’;' like Leigh Hunt’s 

“ Crabbed Scot that once upon a time 


Asked what a poem proved, and just had wit 
To prove himself a fool by asking it.” ? 


1 The story is quoted by Schopenhauer, Wille und Vorstellung, book 111. 
2 Alter et Idem. 


102 MUSEUM IDEALS 


‘Except in so far as it is formative or directive, of what 
good can art possibly be?” we ask; all alike judgments by 
their extrinsic value, of things created for their intrinsic 
worth. But the difficulty with the esthetic view of art 
has a deeper source than this, in a widely human indisposi- 
tion to pure contemplation. “Man never is, but always 
to be blest”; or as Pascal wrote a century before Pope, 
“This world is so full of disquietude that we almost never 
dwell upon our actual existence, upon the moment in 
which we are now living, but upon that in which we are 
going to live; so that we are forever preparing for life in the 
future, but are never ready to live now.”’! Art aims to offer 
us, even here on this unsatisfactory earth, sights that are 
really satisfying, moments that we would wish to delay, 
things that are worthy for the mind to rest in; but the 
imperative necessities of practical life have so ingrained 
within us habitudes of thinking and striving for the mor- 
row, that the best of us are often unable to accept the gift. 


1 Pensées, part 1, Xvu, 29. 


IV 
THE DIDACTIC BIAS IN MUSEUM MANAGEMENT 


Wuat Jeremy Bentham called “question-begging epi- 
thets” not only mean but demean what they signify. 
**Bias”’ applied to states of mind is such an epithet. It 
denotes one-sidedness where one-sidedness is out of place; 
that is, in the judgment. In the cut of clothing bias may 
be quite in place. The use of the term in the title of an 
essay announces condemnatory writing — that humbler 
but sometimes useful type of literature to which polemics 
and philippics belong. 

By the didactic bias is here meant the belief that the 
value of everything and in particular the value of fine art, 
is chiefly its instructive value. Let us first escape Ben- 
tham’s criticism by seeking to prove this belief, in the case 
of fine art, a one-sidedness of judgment; and then point out 
its untoward influence upon museum management. 

The educational theory of the value of fine art is the 
outcome of two deep-seated and allied spiritual faults, one 
organic, one functional. The organic fault is an undue 
preponderance of the active over the affective nature; the 
functional fault an ascription to means of the honor due 
ends. 

1. The organic fault is the defect of a quality in the 
English-speaking peoples. Atrophy of perception and 
hypertrophy of reaction produce in the Anglo-Saxon spirit 
a comparative aversion to pleasure and absorption in 
effort. This trait gives its point to Heine’s taunt that 
in old England “‘the machines behave like men, and men 
like machines,’’! and to Lowell’s that in New England we 


1 T. Borne, book um. 


104 MUSEUM IDEALS 


“Kerry a holiday ef we set out 
Ez stiddily ez though ’t was a redoubt.’’? 


Confronted by an object which, like a work of art, has a 
double appeal, may be taken either as a source of delight 
or stimulus to curiosity, most of us instinctively choose the 
active alternative. Over-familiar with enjoyment in the 
shallow and ill-regulated forms open to undeveloped affec- 
tive natures, we are too apt to fill our laborious days with 
an ignorant scorn of delights accessible to others. Fine 
Art is the precipitate of happy moments, and in this its 
essential nature we as hustlers — on the way but mostly 
ignorant of where we are going — tend to despise it as a 
weak affair, a matter for women, children, and emasculate 
men, reserving our approval for its accidental réle as meat 
for school drill and the investigator’s toil. 

This is a good efferent belief, felt from our marrow, no 
less strong because seldom articulate. We have an ances- 
tral contempt for artists and connoisseurs, as for any man 
who sings, overflows in baying at the moon or elsewhither. 
Ruddy and healthy as it is, the fruit, with a clear skin and 
shining eyes, of active digestion and dreamless sleep, this 
belief is, alas, also stupid. The sentiment that it is only as a 
matter of learned discipline that fine art has serious value, 
and that public interest in art as an object of enjoyment 
simply is an essentially light and trifling affair, rests first 
on a false antithesis between the serious and the pleasant, 
and second on a false synthesis between knowledge and the 
serious. Pleasure is not something essentially trivial; nor 
is knowledge something essentially important. The more 
vivid and overwhelming’ pleasure becomes the more ab- 
solutely serious a thing it is; while there is nothing more 
frivolous than the didactic trifler known as the pedant. 

Delusion the first springs from an identification of the 


1 Biglow Papers, no. v1: “Sunthin’ in the Pastoral Line.” 


DIDACTIC BIAS IN MUSEUM MANAGEMENT 105 


enjoyable with the comic. “‘Three hours of laughter”’ is 
on American theatre-posters synonymous with an eve- 
ning of enjoyment. Serious and comic being opposites, the 
serious becomes, to the naive intelligence, equivalent to 
the joyless. The truth, which the naive intelligence does 
not suspect, is that the pleasure a work of art can give is 
too intense and too voluminous not to be serious. Poe 
writes of “Days when mirth was a word unknown, so 
solemnly deep-toned was happiness.”’! 

Delusion the second evidences, by its overestimate of the 
importance of knowledge, the American lack of it. “‘Omne 
ignotum pro magnifico.”’ Compare the infectious awe which 
a book and he who can read it inspires among Ariosto’s 
athletes with the scant reverence which modern literati 
pay printed matter.? Not all inquiry is important for every 
one, and in particular historical inquiry into art, apart from 
the aid it may give in the enjoyment of art works, has no 
serious importance except for specialists. Intrinsically the 
history of art has no more claim upon the attention of the 
intelligent public than has the history of religion or of sci- 
ence, or of government, or of any other special element of 
civilization. By itself considered it is one of the least of. 
human concerns. But the commerce of’art works is one of 
the greatest. The knowledge of art history bears much the 
same relation of importance to the friendship of art itself 
that a knowledge of the Diophantine Analysis has to the 
ability to cipher correctly, or the perusal of Lecky has to 
keeping one’s word to one’s neighbor and one’s hands off* 
his property. 


1 Colloquy of Monos and Una. 
2 Orlando Furioso, tv, 17; also xv, 19: 


“un libro, onde facea 
Nascer, leggendo, l’alta maraviglia.” 


**A book out of which, in reading, 
He made deep marvels come.” 


106 MUSEUM IDEALS 


2. The functional fault expressed in the didactic bias is 
a common human failing. Absorption in means to the 
neglect of ends has been a matter for moralists in all ages. 
“« Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas.”’! People do not 
like to think about ends at all. The very idea of an “end in 
itself” is caviare to the general public. Even the syllable 
‘‘end”’ has a hollow, tomb-like resonance. “Man always 
wants a something beyond,” as George Eliot remarks. 
We cannot rest without an eye to the future. Shake- 
speare’s 

“Trip no further, pretty sweeting, 
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,” 
fails with most of us to awaken a responsive chord. This 
looking for the future is ingrained into Christian civiliza- 
tion, although we may believe the mood to have been alien 
to the Greek mind, and although the Gospel petition is 
plain: “Thy Kingdom come on earth.” 

Hence it arises, very naturally, however unreasonably, 
that our highest praise for anything is the epithet “educa- 
tional.”” By this even careful speakers often mean only 
that the thing talked of is a good thing, an element of 
model living, something that we include in our ideal of 
human condition. But the habit of speech is bad. “‘Edu- 
cational”’ has a definite meaning, namely “formative”; 
and it darkens counsel to use it as a mere vocable of bene- 
diction, a simple synonym for “‘good.”’ The case is clear 
against the practice. If a preparatory thing and a good 
thing are synonymous, it results that the thing prepared 
for is worth nothing. But the preparation for a worthless 
thing is itself not worth while; and thus we find ourselves 
damning what we have just blessed. This is a pitiable 
condition for thinking beings. Why long for the morning 
if we fear to see it break? Only in a mental fog does educa- 


1 Juvenal, Sat., vit. 


DIDACTIC BIAS IN MUSEUM MANAGEMENT 107 


tion or betterment in general seem the controlling interest 
in life. The controlling interest in life is happiness for 
one’s self and for others. Pleasure and virtue are the goal, 
knowledge the guide. As Poe wrote in his “‘ Letter to Mr. 
B.”: “... it is a truism that the end of our existence is 
happiness; ... Therefore the end of instruction should be 
happiness; and happiness is another name for pleasure; 

. and pleasure is the end already obtained which in- 
struction is merely the means of obtaining.” 

While, therefore, this educational enthusiasm is com- 
prehensible, to wit, as the tribute of the Present to the 
Future, it is of deformative and stultifying tendency unless 
firmly controlled, and gives occasion for a note of warning. 
Unless the Future is some day and for some one to become 
the Present, the less we think of it the better. That this 
note should be raised from Boston seems wholly appro- 
priate. If teaching is the power for human enlightenment 
we all believe it, a didactic metropolis should be the first 
to waken from the intoxication of the worship of education 
as an end and give it the sober regard befitting its status as 
means. 

In the concerns of a museum of fine art the over- 
emphasis of education, and in particular of instruction, may 
be deprecated both on a priori and a posteriori grounds. 

1. A priori: because either an absurdity of logic or de- 
rogatory to art. 

It is irrational because in restricting he collection of a 
museum to objects of fine art the principle of exclusion is in 
contradiction with the assumed educational purpose. The 
regulative principle of an institution should be consistent 
with its constitutive principle. Other things than works of 
art would contribute to education whether moral, historic, 
or technical; and in shutting them out that purpose is 
implicitly denied. The wear of Michel Angelo’s chisel or 


108 MUSEUM IDEALS 


that of a volume from his library might throw a ray of light 
on his art shed by no work of his; and the tool or the book 
could not consistently be excluded from any museum 
whose purpose was primarily educational. Yet a museum 
of fine art would exclude it, and hence though it said Yes 
to the didactic theory would still do No, which is absurd. 

By no means, it will be answered; correctly expressed, 
the purpose of collecting and exhibiting the best attainable 
works of genius and skill is to educate through art, which 
is itself educational in essential nature. This assertion is 
lése majesté. The essential nature of fine art is not educa- 
tional but fruitional, not formative but creative. Art is the 
Gracious Message pure and simple, without arriére pensée, 
the Santa Conversazione of iconography. This latter — a 
sympathetic entrance into gifted minds by the contempla- 
tion of material products through which these minds have 
spoken — is one of the ends of existence. Education is one 
of its means. In simplest terms, education — the moulding 
of thought, word and deed —is preparation for the per- 
fect life; but art — the marriage of creation and apprecia- 
tion — is integral to the perfect life. In the mouths of those 
responsible for an art museum, a didactic theory of its 
purposes is worse than a slight; it is a betrayal; for thereby 
the guardians of a diamond maintain before the world that 
it is really a pebble. 

2. A posteriori. 

The interests of enjoyment and instruction in an art 
museum may openly conflict. The accumulation, by a 
museum, of objects historically or technically interesting 
(e.g., reproductions) may prevent acquisitions of artistic 
quality; and the powers of a staff may be so engaged in the 
initiation of the few into the science of their subject as to 
unfit them from representing its religion to the many. An 
arrangement of exhibits which will save the comparative 


DIDACTIC BIAS IN MUSEUM MANAGEMENT 109 


student most steps and distraction of mind may be in- 
harmonious and wearisome to the seeker after a compre- 
hension of the works installed. The use of galleries for 
viva voce instruction may become a disturbance of the 
public peace for him who would give ear to the silent voices 
therein. A monopoly of the space before great works of art 
by copyists may become a museum abuse. These and many 
other possible conflicts call for a settlement between the 
point of view of the masters who have wrought on canvas 
and in stone that we might enter into their labors; and that 
of those their servants who hold the theory of the essen- 
tially educational purpose of collections of their achieve- 
ments. 

But such a theory cannot, as argued a priori, be main- 
tained at all; both because a collection of works of fine art 
exists by hypothesis for fine art and because in so doing it 
fulfils a purpose outranking education. 


V 
CONNOISSEUR AND DILETTANTE: A MEDITATION ON 
SKIMMING SUGAR WITH A WARMING-PAN 

Timothy DExTER was a singular character of Revolu- 
tionary times in New England who, having become sud- 
denly rich, assumed the title of “‘Lord”’ and built in New- 
buryport a stately mansion, adorning the grounds with 
statues of himself among those of great men and mytho- 
logical beings. He is remembered for many other conspicu- 
ous whims, chief among them the despatch to the West 
Indies of an invoice of warming-pans, which he sold there 
at a profit for sugar-skimmers, when for their original pur- 
pose they proved a drug in a tropical market. The story 
is told from the point of view of the trader as an instance 
of push and resource triumphant over incorrigible oddity. 
It may also serve, from the point of view of the purchaser, 
as an instance of the successful diversion of a work of 
man’s hand to a purpose wholly other than that for which 
it was made. It becomes thus a parable of the frequent 
fate of objects of fine art of every kind, from pictures to 
poetry. For a West Indian of Lord Timothy Dexter’s time, 
deciding upon the best use of certain newly imported hard- 
ware, could not have disregarded the true nature of that 
famous invoice more completely than many of the most 
sensible people at all times, dominated either by their 
emotions or their thirst for knowledge, ignore the true na- 
ture of a work of art. “‘How convenient the long handle at 
the sugaring-off!’’ we can fancy the planter saying; ““How 
neat the receptacle, and easily cleaned!” “What a piquant 
taste it gives the product!’ And yet Lord Timothy Dex- 
ter’s ventures were made, not to skim sugar, but to warm 


CONNOISSEUR AND DILETTANTE 111 


beds; as works of fine art are made, not to skim the sweets of 
emotion or knowledge, but to warm the couch of fancy at 
the fires of genius. This truth the dilettante overlooks, and 
the connoisseur recognizes. 

Ktymologically, a connoisseur is one who knows fine 
art; a dilettante one who delights in it. But connoisseur- 
ship implies taste. Hence a connoisseur is one who de- 
lights in it too. Evidently etymology throws us off the 
track; the distinction must lie between enjoyment en- 
lightened and enjoyment unenlightened. There are two 
ways of enjoying a work of art. One may enjoy the artist 
in it; or one’s self over it. The connoisseur enjoys the artist, 
the dilettante himself. | 

What is it to enjoy an artist in his work? It is to gain 
from the work just the particular kind of spiritual harvest 
that it yielded him. It is to see it with his eyes or hear it 
with his ears, to grasp it with his mind, to feel it with his 
heart. It is to make it mean to us what it meant to him. 
This is to apply the work to the artist’s own purpose in 
creating it. His artistic intention becomes our own. 

What is it to enjoy ourselves over a work of art? It is to 
gain from it another than the spiritual harvest it yielded 
its maker. It is to see or hear in it what he did not put 
there, to contemplate it with other thoughts and other 
feelings than his, It is to make it mean to us what it never 
meant to him. This is to apply the work to purposes of our 
own choice in contemplating it. Our own non-artistic 
intention supplants that of its maker. 

This mis- or ab-use of an artistic object is possible in 
three ways; and there are accordingly three varieties of 
dilettanteism. We may allow a work of art to waken in us 
any feeling it will, without any effort to read it as a mes- 
sage from another soul. We may seek in it only our own 
interests, without penetrating by its means into the artist’s 


112 MUSEUM IDEALS 


interests. This is emotional dilettanteism. Or, we may 
make an artist’s work serve our thirst for theoretical or 
practical knowledge. Instead of trying to assimilate the 
work itself, we may strive to learn about it. Our aim may 
be, not to perceive it, not to take it in as the artist intended, 
but to make the work and its methods the subject of in- 
vestigation, as the artist never intended. This is intellec- 
tual dilettanteism, in its two forms, scientific and technical. 
Despite the aroma of disesteem — even of disgust — 
that clings in our latitude and time about the word senti- 
ment, emotional dilettanteism may be quite as respectable 
a form of egotism as its intellectual fellows. All three are 
a practical denial of the artist’s right to exist for his own 
purposes. All three are selfish in the presence of an op- 
portunity for unselfishness. But even a mis-use in the 
strict sense may not be wholly an ab-use in the bad sense, 
as Lord Timothy Dexter’s West Indians proved. 
Emotional dilettanteism in its commonest form is the 
love of money in disguise. Le Raphael d’un Mullion was the 
title given by Parisians a generation ago to an altar-piece 
since sold at a much higher price in America: “The mil- 
lion-frane Raphael.’ Even in France, the nation of cul- 
ture, popular interest in the picture was largely fed from 
its glamour of cost. Yet what had Raphael to do with a 
million franes? Did he aim to communicate to us in the 
canvas the pay that he got for it? All the emotions of 
cupidity that have since swarmed about the painting were 
feelings totally foreign to the mass of line and light and 
color that he wrought to carry its high religious meaning. 
In our own beloved land, bent upon making a magnificent 
living, the glamour of cost is still greater. Where political 
authority is equal and social privilege forbidden, money is 
the sole power with a leverage on every one; and the dollar 
becomes — at least for rhetorical purposes — almighty. 


CONNOISSEUR AND DILETTANTE 113 


Ours is the country of five thousand dollar banquets, mil- 
lion dollar hotels, ten million dollar babies; and nothing 
so recommends to us a work of art as an exceptional price. 
Commercial dilettanteism is to many an idle spectator his 
only avenue of access to fine art. We buy best sellers, we 
throng prize plays, we crowd before the Rembrandt that 
cost a king’s ransom. 

In the collector himself, emotional dilettanteism takes 
other forms. Dr. La Caze, true beholder of the works of 
art he gathered to bequeath to the French people, divided 
collectors into three species. The first collects things in 
order to have them; the second in order that others shall 
not have them; the third in order to enjoy them. The first 
is dominated by the emotion of possession. His gallery 
hospitality is the “‘tour du proprio”? — the excursion of the 
proud possessor. The taste of the second consists, as has 
been wittily said, in an unerring instinct for that which 
others will want when they see it in his possession. Of this 
emotional frame many a famous collection of fine art was 
born, and by it is increased. The pride of exclusive owner- 
ship explains numbered copies, destroyed plates — purely 
non-artistic devices, and as far from the heaven of the 
imagination as earth can well descend. To this envious 
preoccupation the word “dilettante”’’ owes no little of its 
unenviable flavor. The third species embraces the con- 
noisseurs. These are they who collect in order to think 
over again the happy ovens of which their possessions 
were born. 

Emotional dilettanteism in a much higher form is ac- 
customed to make of fine art a running accompaniment 
to the habitual current of the thoughts. For the amateur 
in this sense ideal contemplation consists in fluctuations of 
attention as occasion offers between the fancies of others 
and his own reverie or his own affairs. Its réle is that of a 


114 MUSEUM IDEALS 


series of momentary interludes in his preoccupation with 
his proper life — glances elsewhere, fragments of talk on 
other things. Such is the habit of the opera balconies. This 
is the tired-business-man theory of artistic appreciation. 
It assumes that what the mind can take in when supine 
and distraught is the real meat in works of fancy. Flaccid 
and disjointed apprehension is that which best assimilates 
artistic beauty. Yet there was one person — namely, the 
artist — whose attention to the work of his hand was 
neither supine nor distraught, flaccid nor disjointed. Can 
recumbent and interrupted beholding win from it what it 
won from him? Verily not. The tired business man must 
submit to learn that his is but an outside view of what he 
beholds, that immense penetralia await another mental 
attitude, incompatible alike with somnolence and with 
distraction. “M. Mozart,” said the Emperor after the 
opera, “‘there are a great many notes in your piece.” 
**Not one too many,” replied Mozart. This vital fact had 
passed quite unperceived by the imperial ignoramus as 3 by 
his court of tired business men. 

The highest type of emotional dilettanteism blends 
insensibly into connoisseurship. We can easily imagine 
Carl Maria von Weber looking down with indulgence upon 
the gray-haired doctor of law whose self-imposed duty it 
has always been to hear “Der Freischuetz”’ whenever it is 
given, in plous memory of the happy times — “ Die waren 
gliickliche Zeiten’ —when an Agathe of long ago was the 
heroine of his own romance. For ‘‘Der Freischuetz,” too, 
is a story of love, and the passions which warm the old 
veins are essential elements in the effects the composer 
sought. Punch’s matron, remarking before the Venus of 
Melos, “Lawk! it’s hexact like hour Hemma!” was plainly, 
by the happy fortune of her close relationship to Hemma, 
no total stranger to the artist’s ideal. William James’s 


CONNOISSEUR AND DILETTANTE 115 


good old couple in ecstasies over the expressions of humil- 
ity, of passionate faith, of ineffable adoration, in the faces 
of some of Titian’s figures, although, as Dr. James inti- 
mates, their talk would have made Titian’s blood run cold, 
yet found in the picture psychic data which might have 
lain within the artist’s intention. Indeed, they properly 
form a part of the artistic content of an altar-piece. We 
make no mistake in looking upon Giotto’s frescoes in 
the Lower Church at Assisi with the eyes of Christian 
faith. The sacred poem we love for the lips that once 
uttered, or the occasion that once hallowed it, was made 
for such lips and such occasions, and we do not wander far 
from it in remembering them. 7 

Intellectual dilettanteism of both kinds is divided from 
connoisseurship by a sharper line, but in the technical 
form has also its bond of connection with the artist. The 
line is sharp because it is the line that separates perceiving 
a work of art from reflecting upon it, the thing itself from 
our thoughts about it, the question What ? from the ques- 
tions How? and Why? ‘The connection exists because 
the technical dilettante applies the questions How ? and 
Why ? to the artist at work. 

The scientific dilettante, if a historian of art, seeks to 
date the work before him, to trace the influences it be- 
trays or has exercised; if a historian of civilization, to re- 
constitute by its aid the habits of thought, the ways of 
living, the persons and events of its time and place; if a 
theorist, to establish the principles that govern the artistic 
impulse. The technical dilettante studies the artist’s 
methods as the work reveals them. But what part of all 
these ambitions entered the artist’s mind as he worked and 
became the purpose of his painting, his carving, his music, 
his verse? Not an atom. The artist wrought in order to 
share with us a certain complex of sensation, thought and 


116 MUSEUM IDEALS 


feeling; and its date, its causes and effects, its implications 
and significance are not his work but ours. If we are con- 
noisseurs, we share in what the artist offers, we do not add 
thereto. 

Thus each of the three kinds of dilettante, emotional, 
scientific, and technical, has his own way — and a way not 
to be despised — of ignoring the true nature of what he — 
delights in. The emotional dilettante, who “knows what 
he likes,” though he “knows nothing about art,” all 
unknowingly fulfils in minor, or perhaps major, degree 
the artist’s purpose in the object of his liking. He has the 
root of the matter in him; for the root of the matter is 
joy — though it be the tragic joy of a morning such as 
breaks for Achilles’ death over the Agean in Regnault’s 
Automedon. The scientific dilettante, although his pur- 
pose and achievement lie wholly outside the purpose and 
achievement of the artist, yet by the way and even in the 
end may have to do with the proper content of what he 
studies. “‘To the student of art the most precious result 
of his labor is the full pure enjoyment of the work of art.””} 
So the archeologist Furtwingler wrote, not forgetting 
that the way we may come by a thing is not the thing we 
come by. So our own Professor Gildersleeve confesses, 
“it is to the conviction that philology is not all science, it 
is to the quest of art through science, that I owe the joy 
of life in my vocation.”? Moreover, it is for no individual 
end that the historian or the esthetician transforms to 
a datum of inquiry the object of admiration a work of art 
was meant to be, but in the service of a science and there- 
fore of the world. The technical dilettante, finally, enters 
the artist’s mind as the emotional dilettante also may; 
yet not to share, if remotely, in his purpose, as the other 


1 Kunstsammlungen aus alter und neuer Zeit. (Munich, 1899.) 
* Oscillations and Nutations of Philological Studies, Johns Hopkins University 
Circular. (April, 1901.) 


CONNOISSEUR AND DILETTANTE 117 


does, but to study his methods; and, for the most part, 
against the artist’s will. A picture was still incomplete 
in Whistler’s eyes if it lent itself to like inquiries. ‘‘In- 
dustry in art is a necessity — not a virtue — and any 
evidence of the same in the production is a blemish.”’ 

The more honorable part in the service of fancy re- 
mains with the connoisseur. For the civil thing to do when 
a man speaks to us Is to listen to what he says, and neither 
to let our wits go wool-gathering, discuss his lineage and 
breeding, nor criticise his rhetoric and delivery; as the 
sensible thing to do with a warming-pan is to use it neither 
in skimming sugar nor in any other process save the proc- 
ess of warming beds for which it was made. 








PART II. METHOD 
I. GROWTH 
II. CONSTRUCTION 
II. INSTALLATION 
IV. EXEGESIS 
V. GOVERNMENT 





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I 
GROWTH 
ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 


WHEN we speak of “‘promoting the cause of fine art,” 
just what do we mean? A cause is some state of affairs that 
somebody wants to bring about. Fine art consists of 
things created to be enjoyed — for the purposes of this 
book, tangible things, excluding music, literature and their 
allies. TTo promote the cause of fine art thus understood 
is to see to it that architecture, sculpture, painting, and 
their minor derivatives shall be abundantly and worthily 
created and widely and rightly enjoyed, or both. 

People may combine to promote the cause of the tangi- 
ble imagination in at least four ways. Artists may com- 
bine in guilds to help each other to recognition, or in 
schools to hand on their processes to the next generation. 
Amateurs in the best sense — those who love beautiful 
buildings, statues, pictures and the like — may combine 
either to make it possible for artists to create these things, 
as clubs, churches, cities and other bodies do; or to put 
those already created into a position to be enjoyed. Artists 
promote the cause of fine art collectively by Association 
and Instruction; amateurs, by Patronage and Exhibition. 

Museums of fine art as we have hitherto known them are 
codperative enterprises with the purpose last mentioned. 
They are one of two ways in which amateurs combine to 
get artists a hearing — or more exactly a seeing. Their 
way is to gather together in a special building the things 
they want to have seen. The other way is to make known 
the things in situ; and this is the way taken by the gov- 


124 MUSEUM IDEALS 


ernmental and private organizations, long established in 
the Old World, and just beginning in the New, which are 
devoted to inventorying artistic treasures within specified 
territory. Museums, on the contrary, are collections. They 
grow by bringing objects together in one place. The two 
methods notably differ in that architecture falls within the 
scope of inventories, and almost wholly outside the scope 
of collections. Buildings cannot in general be removed and 
set up together. Hence architecture contributes to the 
contents of museums chiefly in the form of sculptured 
ornament. 

Collecting for museums consists in acquiring sculptures, 
elements of architecture, pictures, or objects of minor art, 
for the purpose of placing them on permanent show in 
a place apart. To be good collecting, the process of ac- 
quisition must serve and not disserve the cause of art. 
Unless it helps on either artistic enjoyment or artistic 
creation, it defeats its own ultimate purpose. What shall 
museums collect to meet these conditions? 

As to artistic enjoyment. A question not to be avoided 
regarding any proposed museum acquisition is ‘* Will the 
object be better off in a gallery? Will it be seen to better 
advantage, enjoy a longer lease of life, meet a more re- 
sponsive public?” 

Plainly, yes, in the case of objects brought from isolated 
or unsuspected places, the finds of explorers and excava- 
tors. So with objects in places grown obscure or dangerous, 
either no longer visible as they were meant to be, or doomed 
by smoke or dust or glare or frost or damp or fire or neglect 
or other source of decay. So with objects already exiled 
from the places they were made to occupy, bereft of the 
function they once fulfilled, liable to fall into weak or 
ignorant hands, like much of the stock in trade of the artis- 
tic market. But as plainly, no, in the case of objects still 


ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 125 


safe where they were meant to be, still capable of fulfilling 
an intended function, still appealing to a public like that 
for which they were fashioned. To gather such things into 
collections is not to promote but hinder the cause of art. 
They give less artistic enjoyment in a gallery on two 
accounts. They become fragments, unsupported by the 
environment of place and event for which the artist reck- 
oned them. They are cheek by jowl with other fragments, 
more or less alien. The museum affords an asylum for the 
flotsam and jetsam of art, its waifs and strays. It re- 
stores their threatened or suspended animation, but only 
by offering an institutional surrogate for normal life. From 
their niches in an Italian villa, the statues asked Mignon, 
“My poor child, what have they done to thee?” and the 
timeless beauty of every untouched work of art presses 
this question upon every beholder; but in a museum it is 
the beholder that is tempted to ask it of all he sees. The 
statue or relief once deepened the impressiveness of a 
temple now ruined or a tomb now buried, was a rallying 
point in a forgotten market-place, or the genius of a grove 
now felled. The bit of fresco, the historical canvas, the 
likeness of a noted man, was made to catch wandering 
eyes in an assembly hall. The family portrait hallowed the 
walls of a home, the landscape or the genre picture bright- 
ened them, the cassone or the carven table saw them fur- 
nished and dismantled. The altar-piece guided the thoughts 
of far-away worshippers, the rug was their place of prayer. 
The tapestry helped to make sumptuous a palace now a 
memory. The coin passed from buyer to seller within a 
vanished body politic. The armor can no longer shine at 
any tournament, nor turn a hostile blow on any battle- 
field. The porcelain held flowers of the antipodes, toasts 
were drunk from the bowl, the urn has been emptied of 
beloved ashes, the vial of passionate tears. The miniature 


126 MUSEUM IDEALS 


hid between the leaves of books now scattered. The mirror 
framed the image of a fair face, the jewels flashed on beau- 
tiful shoulders. To gather up these fragments from the past 
is an imperative duty of artistic piety. When the New 
Zealander has finished sketching the ruins of St. Paul’s 
from the broken arches of London Bridge, he may carry 
away Landseer’s bronze lions to be the pride of a South Sea 
museum: but while the central roar of a metropolis still 
beats upon them, the cause of art is best advanced if they 
keep their watch about the foot of Nelson’s column in 
Trafalgar Square. 

As to artistic creation. What method of collecting for 
museums will help it? Obviously, direct purchases from 
artists. Acquisitions from the studio or the exhibition will 
nourish producers and the distinction of the sales will stim- 
ulate production. But to include this kind of collecting for 
museums, the definition just given of the type of institu- 
tion to which they belong needs to be enlarged. They be- 
come one of the ways in which amateurs can combine to 
get things made, as well as to get them seen. A museum 
that buys from artists is not simply an exhibition place for 
our inheritance from the artistic patronage of a former 
day: it becomes a patron on its own account. This second 
role is at once new, and important. 

It is new. Museums of fine art themselves are a com- 
paratively new thing. The French Revolutionists may be 
said to have founded the first one when in 1793 they took 
possession, in the name of the people, of the collections of 
fine art in the royal palaces of France, and formed the 
nucleus of the Louvre. The museums founded in Europe 
during the generations immediately following were also the 
result of the nationalization of private cabinets, princely or 
royal. Museums of art were from the beginning the second 
abode of their contents, dedicated to the past and not to 


ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 127 


the present. The greatest still remain wholly devoted to 
the cause of artistic enjoyment, not artistic creation. Per- 
haps the Crystal Palace of 1851 marks the date when 
works of fine art began to be bought from their makers for 
permanent public show. Museums of; art in America owe 
their origin to this exhibition, and to our own world’s fairs, 
to which it gave the impulse. With us the motive of 
artistic piety had not the compelling force it possessed in 
the Old World. Our short pioneer history had afforded the 
tangible imagination comparatively little scope: and our 
hardly interrupted prosperity had left much of its prod- 
uct still in the public places and private hands where it 
was intended to be. A share in the salvage of exotic art 
was open to our museums; and American public spirit has 
liberally provided the necessary money. But time is also 
necessary. Opportunities must offer, and the capacity to 
seize them ripen. Patronage, on the contrary, can be im- 
mediate; and patronage of home talent appeals to local 
pride. Hence our art museums have tended from the first 
to supplement their importations by works of art fresh 
from the maker’s hand. They have ceased to be simply the 
asylum of creations of the material arts, and have become 
in a measure their intended home. 

The new role is also important. It implies a radical 
change in the attitude toward the material arts hitherto 
maintained by artist and amateur alike. In all ages, work- 
ers with the brush, the chisel, the mould or the loom, have 
for the most part sought to beautify objects of use; and 
their patrons have demanded the continual companionship 
of their creations. In working with an eye to installation 
in a museum, artists aim to beautify nothing; and the 
occasional companionship of their work is all that ama- 
teurs obtain. 7 

It can hardly be denied that in the event both creation 


128 MUSEUM IDEALS 


and enjoyment would suffer. The guidance and constraint 
of a non-artistic aim is by general admission a well-nigh 
indispensable condition of the highest achievement in any 
material art. If this is true, museum-made art is con- 
demned in advance to inferiority. So the authorities agree. 
The artists cannot be depended on to do their best at it. 
Nor can amateurs get the most from it. Museum-made art 
accepts in advance the position of a recourse for hours of 
freedom, resigning that of the possible inspiration of any 
hour. Arudimentary knowledge of the human heart teaches 
that this positionis inferior in quality as in quantity. One’s 
moods may not coincide with one’s leisure; and to make 
the most of them we must live amid the beauty which they 
crave. The inference is unequivocal. Should museums 
take up the patronage of art as a permanent function 
they would usurp a réle that true fidelity to its cause de- 
mands should be left to the public. Museum patronage 
would tend eventually to lame the worker and disadvan- 
tage his work. In the long run the nourishment and stimu- 
lus it gives artists would not pay. The ideally best col- 
lecting for museums consists in acquiring from the user, 
not the maker. To be first-class, a collection of fine art 
must, unless by exception, be second-hand. ! 


1 Tf we love art, we must rejoice in proportion as museums are unnecessary; 
and look upon its conservation therein as the Greeks looked upon existence in the 
underworld, all of whose years were not in their minds worth a single day of warm 
and breathing life. 

In his Eléments et Théorie de l Architecture (Paris, 1890, vol. 11, p. 316) Pro- 
fessor Guadet writes: 

“Tn all epochs really creative artistically, museums have been unknown: least 
of all would those times have comprehended an artist’s producing a work for im- 
mediate interment in such a domain of death. Painting was then principally 
intended as architectural decoration and for public instruction, the spiritual 
elevation of the people. Every painting had its predetermined place, its des- 
tination, its setting; it was part of a whole, in harmony with the other elements. 
Mural painting came first, but even the later easel pictures had their situation, 
their surroundings, their calculated lighting. Nor can we pronounce the word 
sculpture without the thought of immortal masterpieces, conceived and executed 
for a monument, for a certain spot, whether it be the work of Phidias, the carv- 
ings of cathedrals, or the Medici tombs. 


ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 129 


Nevertheless, there may be ample temporary justifica- 
tion for the assumption by museums of the patron’s réle: 
just as there is temporary justification for the union of art 


“As for those works of art which survived their time, like the antiques dis- 
covered by excavation — those works which necessarily had no modern ap- 
plicability — these were at first collected by private individuals, or, we should 
rather say private individuals, real amateurs, lived with them, gave them a place 
in their intimacy, arranging them in their drawing rooms, their library, their 
dining rooms, the vestibules or porticos of their villa. But as their number has 
increased and princely wealth decreased, a shelter has become necessary for 
such remains of the past. For them the museum is legitimate, since it is their 
means of preservation, a token of respectful piety toward that which without 
this refuge would be an objectless waif. 

“Yes; asylum, Campo Santo, cemetery, whatever one may call it: a museum 
is a kingdom of the past, a place for the preservation of that which is no longer 
living. Even masterworks, if no other abiding place is open to them, will come 
and bury themselves here. Though stripped of all that constituted their environ- 
ment, their significance, their raison d’étre, here they will at least be protected, 
and if seen imperfectly and judged wrongly, still they will be seen and their 
meaning can be divined. 

“But the curious notion has arisen of late that to be inscribed in a museum 
catalogue is the happiest fortune to which a work of art can attain. We see in the 
Louvre — and it is a monstrous thing — sculptures whose place at Versailles and 
Fontainebleau is empty. The beautiful chimney piece at Fontainebleau is de- 
spoiled of the equestrian bas relief of Henry IV by Jacquet de Grenoble, and there 
are even fanatics who propose to rob the Arc de I’Etoile of Rude’s bas-relief 
(Aux Armes) for the benefit of a museum gallery! Stranger still, we have muse- 
ums of living artists! 

“And what happens then? A museum of living artists calls for works made for 
a museum, that is, works without purpose, without significance, without reason 
for existence! An art of virtuosi, perhaps, of clever people, but a sterile art all 
the same, and at all events inferior; for there is no truly great art but such as 
consecrates itself to a higher and disinterested mission.” 

In Kunstsammlungen aus alter und neuer Zeit (1899, p. 29) Professor Adolf 
Furtwingler writes: 

“There is a third kind of art museum which I have not thus far mentioned: 
those, namely, devoted to living art. These I hope will in the coming century dis- 
appear; and I wish this, not from antipathy to living art, but out of regard for it. 
It is solely those conditions in our time which have been hostile to art that have 
brought forth these collections. Real museums are the home of art that has 
passed away, of dead art, into whose remains we have to live ourselves labori- 
ously. What hangs on museum walls is there mainly as an object of exacting 
study to whose understanding we must pave our way by investigation of the past. 
Far be it from modern art to wish while alive to be treated like the art of antiq- 
uity! 
~ “We gather the remains of the past into the conglomerations we call museums 
because we must; but that which is modern and alive should scatter itself where- 
_ ever modern life is found. Let as many temporary expositions as possible of 
modern work be arranged on private or governmental initiative. But in monu- 
mental museums, conservators of ancient things, the modern do not belong; they 
have but strayed in thither as into the only asylum for art in a time ignorant of 


130 MUSEUM IDEALS 


museum and art school well-nigh universal in this country. 
As in undertaking technical instruction, so in the purchase 
of prize painting and prize sculpture, the American mu- 
seum of the present acts as a nursery for future independ- 
ent agencies. The educational and commercial activities 
of our museums of art bespeak at once the vigor and the 
youth of our civilization. Maturity brings differentia- 
tion; and in due time these forms of organized effort in 
the cause of art will be performed apart from museums, 
education by academies of art, patronage by societies, 
institutions and political units of all kinds. 

To the question thus far discussed — What ought mu- 
seums of art to collect? — the answer is, old things needing 
shelter. Any work of art worth permanent publicity, and 
likely otherwise to be deprived of it, is a proper acquisi- 
tion for museums of art. 

How may this duty be more closely defined? Artistic 
qualities being the purposed characteristics of a thing that 
make it pleasing in itself, these qualities may either have 
been purposed in advance or ex post facto: either sought for 
by the artist or simply accepted by him; they may be the 
fruit, to use the customary words, either of skill or of 
genius. A museum should aim to preserve objects which 
exhibit either to its own judgment or a judgment which it 
regards as wiser, the highest qualities of both kinds. Ina 
phrase happily coined in the course of an official document, 


how to make practical use of it. The contemporary theory of its purposelessness 
helped; but of this, the healthy taste of classic times knew nothing, creating all 
its art works for definite purposes. May such tasks fall again to our artists! And 
may city and nation aid living art, not by buying its creations and immuring 
them among the dead, but by the offer of living tasks! Of these there will be no 
lack if they are more widely sought. Why are not our churches, our cemeteries, 
the corridors and foyers of our theatres, our concert halls, the waiting-rooms of 
stations, our reading-rooms and public baths, our halls of justice, — why are not 
all these full of new works of art? Works that from time to time might be varied 
and exchanged, to arrest attention continually? Our future watchword should be 
— Joy in fresh and living art and immediate and multifarious employment for it 
— Reverence, loving understanding, and protection for the works of the past.” 


ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 131 


museums of art should seek to acquire “the best obtain- 
able works of genius and skill.” The museum of art ex- 
ists that the world shall not lose the best things. Whether 
the best obtainable is of wider or narrower appeal is a ques- 
tion before a museum only when other things are equal — 
ceteris paribus. The point always at issue is not whether 
more or fewer people will approve, but whether the object 
is more or less worth approval. We may, indeed, believe 
that many of the things which are best worth approval will 
prove the things also of widest appeal. In the words of 
Renan, quoted by Matthew Arnold, “Glory is after all the 
thing which has the best chance of not being altogether 
vanity.” But we may, and indeed must, also believe that 
the best exists in countless other forms — the best for me, 
not being the best for you. We may believe that all have 
an equivalent, because an infinite, share in it without be- 
lieving that all have the same share. The duty of the col- 
lector for a museum is to follow his own carefully exercised 
judgment unaffected by the judgment of others, unless he 
see valid reason to prefer it. 

One consideration narrows and one broadens his choice. 
By the phrase worth permanent publicity we mean at least 
to exclude blundering workmanship. The artist must have 
said his say, been able to express himself. There must have 
been an intention behind what he has left us; else it is not 
a creation but material unformed. Mastery must be the 
watchword of good collecting for museums. Shall this be 
the only watchword, or shall we hold that the question 
What an artist says, as well as the question Whether he says 
it must be answered also? It will hardly be disputed that 
the exclusion of unintended performance and the inclusion 
only of work showing a command over means of expres- 


1 Special report of the Committee of the Museum on the Increase of the Col- 
lections: included in the Annual Report of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for 
the year 1883. 


132 MUSEUM IDEALS 


sion, although for practical purposes a sufficient rule, is 
not in theory alli-sufficient. It is possible, though not 
likely, that a worthless or evil message may be well deliv- 
ered. Reserve and charity should govern here. Let us be 
very sure that in our own estimation the intention of the 
artist is actually worthless or evil; and if ourselves con- 
vinced, let us still leave a large margin for the possible 
revision of our judgment by others wiser. Let us err by 
including rather than by excluding too much. If the watch- 
word Mastery, relating to the artist’s ability, needs a 
complement in a watchword relating to the collector’s 
taste, let Catholicity be the word chosen. 

It remains to ask — How does a museum obtain its collec- 
tions? In three ways: by discovery, by gift, and by purchase. 

Discovery, the work of the explorer into buried civiliza- 
tions, merits the first rank among avenues of growth. 
Its results are so many additions to the world’s riches, not 
simply transfers of ownership, as are gifts and purchases. 
But discovery is also a difficult and limited source. Asia, 
the Levant, and in a minor way, the Americas, still possess 
forgotten riches; but knowledge and skill of the rarest type 
is demanded to find them, and the time seems in sight 
when there will be no more to find. Meanwhile, and until 
museums have fulfilled to the utmost possible their posi- 
tive role of discovery, it should be their pride not to resign 
themselves wholly to their negative réle of salvage. 

Gifts have a valid title to the second place among ways 
of acquisition. Their value may be greater than the value 
of purchases ever can be. Acquisitions by purchase are 
limited by what is purchasable and, by what the museum 
has to purchase with. Acquisitions by gift have no limits 
but the possessions and the generosity of other owners. 
Again, time is more likely to justify the decision to accept 
than the decision to purchase. The gift has survived two 


ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 133 


tests; the judgment of the giver and his advisers at the 
time it was acquired, and the judgment of the museum and 
its advisers at the time it was accepted. A purchase under- 
goes but one. It need satisfy only the authorities of the 
museum. Hence the probability that an acquisition will 
not be repented of is higher in the case of gifts. On the 
other hand, gifts are seldom the unconstrained choice of 
the recipient. Some obligation, tacit or explicit, gene- 
rally accompanies them, either augmenting the value of 
things otherwise unacceptable, or decreasing the value 
of things otherwise welcome. Mr. Dooley’s phrase “‘defince- 
less museems”’ indicates that the burden which gifts may 
impose upon museums is a matter of common knowledge. 

The two explicit obligations most commonly attached 
to gifts are that they should be always kept, and, if a num- 
ber of objects, always kept together. Of these two condi- 
tions, the first, —that the gift shall be held in perpetuity, 
— imposes on a museum no less a responsibility than that 
of deciding whether a given work of art is immortal; for, 
unless it be thought so, no museum ought to agree to keep 
it forever. The more enlightened and responsible amuseum 
management, the more reluctant it will be to make this 
hazardous affirmation, and the more frequently will works 
of art so conditioned be declined when otherwise they might 
gladly have been given an honorable place in public view. 
It is true that without this condition there is always the 
possibility that the gift may be disposed of by some future 
management. But the higher its quality and the broader 
their taste, the less is this event to be anticipated; and to 
provide against it signifies mistrust of one or other. Better 
to leave the gift to the judgment of the future, which if it 
reverse that of the present, will at least preserve the name 
of the giver from identification with a work from which the 
world has grown away. 


134 MUSEUM IDEALS 


The condition of permanent ownership would in most 
cases be fulfilled without any promise; but the second 
condition, that works given together should always be 
shown together, would in the absence of express agree- 
ment, almost invariably be violated. They would be shown 
apart because so shown to the best advantage. The 
effect of the individual pieces of a private collection will 
almost always be heightened in settings arranged for them 
from other exhibits of a museum. Almost always, there- 
fore, the provision maintaining a collection as an insoluble 
group works against the common aim of both the condi- 
tions mentioned; for by its operation the giver comes to 
be remembered with less honor than his gifts warrant. 

The common aim of the two conditions is the desire that 
the gift should fitly and enduringly recall the personality 
in whose name it is offered. Every museum owes scrupu- 
lous regard to this legitimate and praiseworthy desire, and 
should accept without hesitation the obligation it imposes. 
Permanence of recognition is of the essence of this obliga- 
tion. Hence, if the gift is parted with in part or wholly, 
the name should be kept by transfer to other objects of equal 
rank. If a collection is distributed through various galler- 
ies, the name should be distributed with it. The interests 
of a museum and of those who seek commemoration for 
themselves or others within its walls are identical. Names 
attached to acquisitions of the museum both recall past 
benefactors and inspire future benefactions. Freedom to 
dispose of a gift gives it a public position under the giver’s 
name whenever, but only so long as, it is an adornment to 
both. Freedom to disperse a collection among surround- 
ings that enhance each piece fulfills not only the museum’s 
purpose to make each possession tell to the utmost, but the 
desire of the giver for remembrance with distinction.! 

1 Maxime Maufra, Le Musée (January, 1907), pp. 16, 17. 


ON COLLECTING FOR MUSEUMS 135 


Acquisitions by purchase have at all times been the 
smallest source of museum growth; and doubtless will 
remain the smallest. However the purchasing funds of 
museums increase, they are not likely to equal those which 
future collectors may have at their command. In its turn, 
a permanent public institution commands a superior type 
of professional skill and information, with a wider out- 
look on artistic history. Museums are in a position to be 
snappers-up of unconsidered trifles that time will prove 
treasures. Their special province as purchasers is that of 
passing opportunities insufficiently appealing to current 
taste. There may often be fortunate chances also which 
warrant their competing with current taste; and of these 
they will bein a position to take advantage in the measure 
in which contributors to their funds come to value disin- 
terestedness, refinement, and scholarship in matters of 
artistic judgment. 


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CONSTRUCTION 


THE IDEALS OF DIAGONAL LIGHTING 
AND RADIAL EXPANSION 





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II 
CONSTRUCTION 


THE IDEALS OF DIAGONAL LIGHTING AND 
RADIAL EXPANSION 


I 
A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKY LIGHTS! 





Si Fran a eb Se 


Figure 1. ScHEME oF ELEVATION 


1. The skylight. A roof, not walls, constitutes a house. 
Sun and rain, not wind and cold, have forced men to build. 
Overhead protection alone may give all necessary shelter. 
The fact is registered in the free treatment of walls con- 
spicuous in the architecture of the Far East. In Oceania 
they are absent. In Japan they are removable.? In China 
the pagoda derives from superposed umbrellas. Series of 
eaves arranged to give lateral protection appear in the 
blinds of our Western houses. But no human shelters in 
any time or country lack a roof. Without an opaque and 
impervious covering an enclosure is not an interior but an 
exterior space, not a room but a court. Unless designed as 


1 Reprinted from Museumskunde, Band vir (1911), Heft. 4. 

2 The word “‘roof”’ (yane) in Japanese means “‘house-root” (E. S. Morse, 
“Japanese Homes and their Surroundings,” New York, 1889, p. 107): i.e. as we 
may infer, the constitutive part of a house. 


140 


MUSEUM IDEALS 


a meeting-place and not as a dwelling-place, its effect will 
have the flavor of mediocrity that betrays latent unreason. 





FicureE 2. STANDARD Museum ARRANGEMENT 


Apartments treated 
as interiors while 
lighted from above 
are a faux genre in 
architecture. 

2. The clerestory. 
The vrar genre of in- 
ternal apartment — 


or chamber surrounded és eee a in the de- 


sign of Roman basil- 
icas and their suc- 
eessors, Christian 
churches. The court 
which the _ basilicas 
inherited from ear- 
lier architecture was 
made a room by rais- 





| f= 

seg sorer SOK Soe “ xx 

So SSSI eee | 

S55 x See 6, es Sf 
Pe Ss ee 

Se 
Toe 
Pe = Onli if 


pep 


Figure 3. Musto NazIonaLE, NAP Es, 1586 


ing its walls, roofing them, and providing them with win- 





Figure 4 
Desien FoR First Museum or Fine Arts, 
Boston, 1871 


ment. 


dows. It became an 
audience hall, or 
nave, receiving high, 
oblique light from 
the raised walls, or 
clerestory: and the 
neighboring spaces 
served for with- 
drawal, or passage, 
as bays or aisles. 

3. The standard 
museum arrange- 


The clerestory principle is immediately applicable 


to a type of museum plan whose frequent use approves 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 141 


it for museum ends, although it was originally designed 
for others. This plan provides exhibition space about two 


large areas separated 
by a structure con- 
taining the main en- 
trance and stairway 
of the building (Fig- 
ure 2). More muse- 
ums adhere to such 
a general arrange- 





Fiagure 5 
KUNSTHISTORISCHES HormMusEuM, VIENNA, 


1872-81 


ment than to any other. The exhibition space is mainly 





Figure 6. Art Institutp, Cuicaco, 1893 


a single suite in the 
Old Museum, Ber- 
lin (1825-28), the 
New Museum, Ber- 
lin (1843-45), the 
National Museum, 
Stockholm (1866), 
the Pennsylvania 
Museum, Philadel- 
phia (1876), the 
Ryksmuseum, Am- 


sterdam (1877-85), and several other large museum build- 


ings. Itis mainly a 
double suite in five 
others whose plans 
are here reproduced. 
In the Naples Mu- 
seum, built (1586) 
for a cavalry bar- 
rack, the spaces in 
the double row are 





FicurE 7 
New Museum or Fine Arts, Boston, 1909 


of nearly equal size, and the stairway is at the opposite end 
of the central block from the entrance (Figure 3). In the 


142 MUSEUM IDEALS 


design for the first building of the Museum of Fine Arts, 
Boston (1871), of which but half was ever executed, the main 
stairway adjoins the central block (Figure 4). In the Kunst- 
historisches Hofmuseum, Vienna (1872), the inner suite on 
the ground floor (the outer on the main, floor) consists of 
cabinets (Figure 5). In the Art Institute, Chicago (1893), 
the cabinets have become corridors and the courts contain 
top-lighted rooms (Figure 6): and a similar development 
of the standard arrangement appears as a fraction of a 
scheme devised to meet special needs and opportunities in 
the ground floor of the central block of the Museum of 
Fine Arts at Boston (1909: Figure 7). 

4. The clerestory development of the standard arrangement. 
The arrangement now consists of two large, top-lighted 
apartments, separated by a top-lighted stairway hall, and 
completely surrounded by passages giving access to ex- 
terior rooms. Applying the clerestory principle to this 
arrangement, the walls of the two large interior spaces are 
raised and pierced, forming two naves which receive their 
light from windows above the surrounding roofs, and lend it 
to the corridors about them: and a lantern is added over the 
stairway hall joining the naves. The present scheme of a 
museum without skylights is the outcome (Figures 1 and 8). 

5. Purpose of the sketches. The sketches in which this 
scheme is here presented are not from a professional hand, 
and have no professional purpose. They are diagrams, 
aiming first to express a certain disposition, proportion and 
assignment of spaces more perfectly, easily, and quickly 
than would be possible by a verbal description: and second 
to indicate to the eye that the structural scheme proposed 
might not be impossible architecturally. To have gone 
further, and have attempted to correct and perfect the 
sketches technically would have been a task alike impossi- 
ble to the writer and unfruitful to the reader. 






4 





Ht 


sf 











ee 


Te 





FOUNTAIN 


a 


' 






Figure 8. Marin Fioor 


144 MUSEUM IDEALS 


6. The problem of the roof. An important practical bene- 
fit and an important esthetic advantage result to the 
standard museum arrangement from the application of 
the clerestory principle. Replacing a quasi-court by a true 
nave replaces a re-entrant roof, leaky in rain and darkened 
by snow, with a salient combination of slopes and window 
walls. Replacing the skylight over the main stairway by a 
lantern gives the exterior a crowning central feature. 

7%. The problem of access. It proves, further, that this 
radical solution of the problem of lighting a museum 
lends itself to an equally radical solution of the problem of 
access therein. As a theatre is designed for spectators, 
or a throng seated to see: an auditorium for auditors, or 
a throng seated to hear: a bridge for crossers, or throngs 
passing and repassing over an obstacle: so a museum is 
designed for visitors, that is, for throngs moving from any 
one of certain spaces to any other, to see the contents. 
Apart from well-designed light openings, spaces freely com- 
municating are the prime requisite in a museum plan. This 
requisite the present sketches meet by giving independent 
access to every room.! 

8. Independent use and free combination of galleries. Two 
important advantages in museum economy result. By 
closing the doors of communication shown in Figure 8 be- 
tween rooms, and opening the doors of entrance to other 
rooms from passages, any one or more rooms may be shut 
off without hindering access to any other. Again by the 
same process, the exhibition space of the building may be 
subdivided into groups of galleries in various ways. The 
value of the first freedom will be appreciated by every 
museum administrator. In most museums, whenever a 
gallery is rearranged, redecorated, or otherwise withdrawn 


1 Tn “ Aims and Principles”’ (see Appendix), the principle called “Segregation ” 
demands independent access to each suite of galleries assigned to cognate exhibits. 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 145 


from public use, either the passage of visitors through a 
whole section of the museum is blocked, or the parapher- 
nalia and personnel of museum work is exposed to public 
view and interference. Moreover, objects in transit must 
be brought through other galleries. The second freedom — 
that of recombining galleries into new department groups 
— is of prime importance in every growing museum. Only 
collections approximately finished, or whose extension can 
be approximately foreseen, can afford to dispense with it. 
In the present scheme, any department could annex a 
neighboring room, and still remain — and leave every 
other — a connected and independent suite. 

9. Selective exhibition. Resting places. Beside offering 
solutions of the problems of lighting and access, the present 
scheme provides for two other recognized desiderata of 
museum administration: the division of collections into a 
Show and a Study series, and the forestalling of museum 
fatigue. For the immediate accessibility of both floors 
from the Entrance Hall permits the independent use of the 
lower, including the naves, for secondary purposes: and the 
extensive passageways of the plan afford the visitor ample 
opportunity for diversion of mind and relaxation of body.! 

10. Chief results. These are the main claims of the de- 
sign. Originating in the wish to escape a traditional archi- 
tectural solecism, a clerestory development of the standard 
arrangement promises within its limits of exhibition capac- 
ity, a happy response to four principal demands of museum 
administration: light, access, division of the collections and 
provision for recreation. 

The adaptation of the structure to further museum needs 
may be passed in review by approaching and traversing it | 
in imagination. 


1 “Aims and Principles” demands provision for rest in stating the principle 
of Segregation: and proposes the division of collections under the title of “Dual 
Installation.” 


146 MUSEUM IDEALS 


11. Minimum shadowing of windows. From a museum 
standpoint the most striking external novelty of the build- 
ing is the free exposure of all its important windows. In 
most large edifices projecting structures conceal part of 
the sky from spaces which nevertheless need all the illumi- 
nation practicable. The familiar subdued or gloomy im- 
pression of rooms at the corners of courts, at the junction 
of wings, or under the shadow of roofs, is the result. In the 
present building this impression would be practically un- 
known. Re-entrant angles occur at but two points in the 
design, and at neither affect the lighting of primary exhibi- 
tion space. The corridors to the wings shadow only the 
adjacent ground floor windows: and the transverse block 
shadows only a small portion of the clerestory, at this 
point reénforced by the lantern. A museum is an institu- 
tion devoted to the use of the eyes, and it is a marked 
advantage of the present scheme as a museum plan that it 
obviates the retrenchment of any important source of 
light. 

12. The grounds. It is assumed that the building will not 
be shadowed by others. To this end free space of eighty 
or a hundred feet is 
needed about it, as 
shown in the diagram 
(Figure 9). With a 
boundary at this dis- 
tance, the plot oc- 
cupied by the main 
building measures about three hundred and fifty by six 
hundred feet and covers an area of about five acres: the 
wings adding one hundred and seventy-five feet at each 
end, and enlarging the plot to nine acres. 

13. The entrances. Of the long sides of the structure one 
is determined as the coté cour by the main entrance: the 


<——/75' 9» 600 <— 17S ——? 





Figure 9. ScHEME oF GROUNDS 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 147 


other as the coté jardin by the external stairway. The busi- 
ness entrance is as far as possible from either, on a short 
side, accessible from a transverse street. 

14. Architectural type. The main building shows a light 
superstructure on a heavy base —as it were a Sainte- 





























































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fe 
SSeS Be eS a | 
a c | 
— apes a 
OFFICES a | | | i a 
\BaSeae 
RIA 
“ roo Pes apr rey j a (— ay, 
a. a | 
scandent 
yl itl 
west wave =] EAST AVE 
= oad 
Le ret i 























SCALE OF FEET 


Figure 10. Crentrat Brock: Grounp FLoor 


Chapelle over a Palais de Justice — and to the lay mind 
would appear to offer a good subject for architectural 
treatment. Romanesque forms have been employed in 
Figure 1 because best suited to the writer’s powers as a 
draughtsman. 

15. Ingress and egress; cloak-rooms and sales-office. Fig- 
ure 10 shows the ground-floor plan of the central block. The 
Entrance Hall is flanked on the right by a cloak-room of 
which a counter is directly opposite the entrance turnstile: 


148 MUSEUM IDEALS 


and on the left by an office for the sale of publications and 
photographs, of which the door is directly opposite the exit 
turnstile. Passage forward into the Entrance Hall is pre- 
vented by a hinged barrier folding back against the turn- 
stiles to give an unobstructed exit sixteen feet wide to 
crowds. The side passages, where those waiting for wraps, 
or to make purchases can stand outside the main stream 
of passers, add twenty feet to this exit width. The two 
counters of the cloak-room, together twelve feet in length, 
insure rapid checking and delivery on ordinary occasions. 
To meet the extra demands of bad weather and great 
crowds, the room beyond might to advantage be reserved 
as an auxiliary cloak-room, communicating with the first 
and with a delivery counter thirty-five feet long opening 
in, or reached from, the transverse corridor. The opposite 
office consists of a sales bureau, eight by ten feet, with a 
counter and cabinets, and a waiting room, ten by twelve 
feet, with table, desk, and chairs for the inspection of photo- 
graphs at ease under a good light. 

16. The Entrance Hall. The Entrance Hall itself is 
planned as a vaulted apartment thirty by forty-six feet and 
sixteen feet high. A few steps lead to an arched corridor on 
the level of the rest of the ground floor, nine feet wide be- 
tween pilasters, and fourteen feet high. This corridor runs 
around the naves, and is lighted from the rooms outside by 
lunettes at ten feet from the floor. Figure 11 shows that 
from the centre of the Entrance Hall, looking across the 
corridor, an arched opening at the foot of the stairway 
frames in the landing, conceived as panelled in masonry, 
and the row of low arches on the main floor above, opening 
into the corridor and the Garden Gallery beyond. 

17. Hall seats; bulletin board; drinking-fountain; elevator; 
telephone. 'The niches, eight feet long, on either side the En- 
trance Hall, just before reaching the steps to the corridor, 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 149 


would be available for seats: and those in the corridor, on 
either side the stairway entrance, for the posting of notices. 
The first niches in the corridors along the stairway might 


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SCALE OF FEET 


Figure 11. Centra Brock: SEctIon 
contain drinking-fountains. A passenger elevator, nine by 
ten feet, running from the basement to the upper floor 
opens opposite the right-hand stairway corridor, and a 
public telephone booth of like size opposite the corridor 
on the left. 

18. The basement. From these corridors stairs lead to 
the basement, planned with an interior height of eleven 
feet, half below ground. Its corridors, duplicating those 
shown in Figure 8, are lighted in the same way from the 
external rooms, and would need artificial light only under 
the central block. The spaces under the naves would be 
available for dark storage and for heating and ventilating 
chambers. That under the Entrance Hall might be used 
for vaults accessible on either side, from rooms devoted to 
departments, or to the administration of the museum. 

19. The lavatories. The stairway corridors on the ground 
floor end in the transverse rear corridor, giving access on 


150 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the one hand to department rooms, and on the other, by a 
lobby, to the public lavatories and retiring rooms. The 
public lavatories of a building used daily by hundreds and 
sometimes thousands of persons should occupy two en- 
tirely independent and easily distinguishable localities, 
both near the entrance and easily found therefrom. They 
should be inconspicuous and impossible to oversee from 
any thoroughfare, and their immediate approach should - 
not need to be entered for any other purpose. The locations 
here assigned them meet these requirements. The direc- 
tion given in the Entrance Hall need only be “‘Down the 
right (or left) hand corridor.” At the end the lobby of 
the lavatory, leading from a short corridor of two bays, 
ending in a locked service door, would be identified by a 
sign. No sign would be needed in the corridor outside. The 
doorway of the lavatory would not be seen from the stair- 
way corridor, and opens, not into the room itself, but into 
a vestibule. The room is lighted by high windows over- 
looking the fountain. The adjacent retiring room for cases 
of illness is independently accessible and has its own 
lavatory. 

20. Service closets. The three adjacent closets marked 
“Service” are designed as storage space for implements of 
cleaning, stepladders, and other apparatus used by em- 
ployees. One should be fitted as a wash closet. The reser- 
vation of convenient space for these purposes is indispen- 
sable for the proper housekeeping of a museum building. 

21. Offices and reserve collections. The rooms reached in 
the other direction along the rear corridor are planned as 
department offices and for the compact installation of 
collections in reserve. They are twenty-eight feet deep — 
and lighted by windows with sills at the customary height. 
In rooms devoted to inspection rather than exhibition it 
should be possible to bring objects near the light. 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 151 


22. The naves. Midway in each stairway corridor three 
doorways open upon one of the naves of the building, con- 
ceived as a vaulted apartment forty-four feet wide, one 
hundred and two long, and eighty-eight high, ending in a 
half octagon, and opening by arches eighteen feet wide on 
centres, under a clerestory, into the main floor corridors as 
into the triforium of a cathedral. On the oblique faces of 
the octagon the arches, and in part the windows of the 
clerestory, are replaced by openings showing the ascent 
of the spiral stairways indicated in Figure 8, which connect 
all the floors of the building and terminate in an external 
ambulatory over the corridors and triforium at the base of 
the clerestory. For sixteen feet from the floor of the nave 
its walls are unbroken except by the piers (if these are 
carried to the floor) and by an occasional door of communi- 
cation with the corridor: and afford in each of ten bays a 
wall-space fourteen to eighteen feet wide and as high as 
pictures can generally be hung, or as statues commonly 
reach, lighted advantageously for exhibition purposes from 
the clerestory. This space is framed above by the parapets 
in the bays of the main floor corridors, overlooking the 
nave. 

23. Nave divisions. Were deep metal sockets buried in 
the masonry of the nave floor, opposite to and eighteen feet 
from each pier, standards and connecting panelling could 
be used to divide one or both naves for temporary purposes 
into a central thoroughfare eight feet wide, and side cab- 
inets eighteen feet deep and multiples of eighteen feet in 
length. At the octagon the standards and panelling might 
be adapted to form a small stage with an opening eighteen 
feet wide and sixteen feet high and exits upon the stairways. 
Since such divisions would follow the structural lines of 
the nave, both perpendicular and horizontal, they would in 
whatever combination form a harmonious addition to the 


152 MUSEUM IDEALS 


architectural composition of the interior. They might be 
of permanent construction, fitted once for all and stored 
in the basement when not in use. 

24. Nave vista. Seen from the apse the nave is termi- 
nated by the entrance wall with its triple portal, and by 
the colonnade crossing upon it like the juwbé of a cathe- 
dral. Above appears the opening of the lantern, and be- 
yond, the vaulting of the other nave. 

25. The main stairway. From the Entrance Hall the 
main stairway ascends by a broken flight to a landing 
twelve by forty-four feet with space for seats, from which 
further broken flights ascend backward on either hand to 
the main floor. The lantern rises overhead between the 
two double colonnades crowned with parapets, over the 
stairway corridors. Figure 11 shows that between the 
colonnades and over the lower arches opening into the rear 
corridor the wall of the library stack fills an arch like that 
of the naves, pierced with small windows and surmounting 
a narrow balcony immediately over the arches. Opposite, 
a similar balcony opens into the Orchestra Gallery, the 
space above being available for an organ. 

26. The Reception Gallery. Across the corridor from the 
top of either flight of the main stairway an arch opens into 
the room called on Figures 8 and 11 the Reception Gallery, 
thirty by forty-six feet, like the Entrance Hall below. 
Since the main stairway brings every one to this point, here 
might be displayed recent acquisitions of the museum, or 
any other objects to which it is desired to call temporary 
attention. On occasion, heavy timber screens might be 
erected eight feet away from the doors at each end, leaving 
an intermediate space thirty feet square for the undisturbed 
inspection of pictures hung on the screens, or of pieces of 
sculpture, or case objects, displayed within the area. 

27. The circuits. The end doorways lead toward the 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 153 


suites of galleries forming the primary exhibition space of 
the museum. Apart from the wings, the whole museum is 
visited by simply keeping on from this start. Nevertheless, 
the visitor is not forced to go on, but may cut his visit 
short and return to the main entrance, without retracing 
his steps, at the two points where he crosses the corridors 
to the wings, and again in the Garden Gallery, as well as 
in any gallery where the door to the corridor provided in 
each is open. Hence the scheme, while putting no obstacle 
in the way of visitors who wish to see the whole museum, 
invites also the more rewarding habit of confining a visit 
to a single branch of the collections. However these are 
outlined, whether by the four suites of which the floor is 
composed, or by doors closed in the course of the suites, 
the tour of any department will bring the visitor upon one 
of the corridors. The scheme even admits of realizing the 
ideal in which each gallery becomes the quiet home of its 
contents, disconnected from every other and opening only 
on acommon passageway. Closing all the doors of commu- 
nication shown in Figure 8 and opening all the doors of en- 
trance, each gallery would become a separate department, 
entered only for its own sake, and through which there 
would be no passing whatever. The union of any number 
of the galleries into one department likewise encounters no 
obstacle. The axial corridors — narrow lobbies gained and 
left through opposite doors — would be no serious inter- 
ruption to the impression of the rooms they separate, and 
would lead no one astray: and the Garden Gallery might 
be installed like the others. Any half, or three quarters, 
or the whole of the galleries of the main building might 
thus be devoted to one sequence of exhibits. 

28. The corridors. The corridors themselves are admi- 
rably lighted for exhibition purposes from the clerestory. 
An exhibit on the wall and a desk case in the opposite bal- 


154 MUSEUM IDEALS 


cony would not interfere with passage, nor would their 
appeal obtrude upon the visitor bound for another branch 
of the collections. These exhibits might either be associ- 
ated each with that of the neighboring gallery, or form 
together an independent class. 

29. The lobbies. From both the Reception Gallery and 
the Garden Gallery access is gained to the adjacent exhibi- 
tion galleries through lobbies. The elevators have doors on 
the lobbies giving direct access to small cabinets available 
as private cloak-rooms on special occasions. The lobbies 
opposite contain stairways to the floor above and service 
closets like those on the floor below. 

30. The exhibition galleries. The rooms on the main floor 
are all twenty-eight feet wide and are represented in Fig- 
ure 8 as of varying lengths. They are twenty-four feet 
high and, with the exception of the Garden Gallery, are 
lighted by windows with sills at half this height! from the 
floor and running to the ceiling. This method of illumina- 
tion is proposed for three reasons: to give the exhibits the 
advantage of high oblique light: to keep the source of light 
out of the visitor’s eyes: to permit the use of the lower part 
of the window wall for the installation of objects not re- 
quiring to be seen at a great distance.” Reflected rays from 
the upper part of the other walls, perhaps also from the 
ceiling, would admirably light the lower part of the window 
wall for any one standing near enough to escape seeing the 
windows above. It is assumed that ceilings generally 
throughout the building will have visible means of support, 
either vaulting or beams on corbels. 


1 Preferably two thirds or more. ‘‘The general conclusion was that side light 
must be high, beginning at a height at least two thirds of the width, extending to 
a height equal to width.” From a notebook of observations abroad by two 
architects. 

* Leonardo advises sketching when objects cast shadows equal to their height 
(Libro della Pittura, cap. 85). These windows should be so treated architecturally 
that the sills of any could be lowered when needed for special collections. 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 155 


31. The spiral stairs. The building has been planned 
with the idea of dividing the space devoted to each branch 
of the collections between two floors, the lower assigned 
to the offices and reserve collections of that branch, and 
the upper to its exhibition galleries. Each department is 
thereby equipped for both the purposes for which objects 
of art are preserved — public exhibition and private study: 
and a convenient means of communication, for both the 
museum personnel and visitors, between the spaces de- 
voted to the two purposes becomes necessary. This is the 
function of the spiral stairways at the ends of the four cor- 
ridors. They would serve instead of the main stairs for 
department uses, and in general would save steps. As they 
continue to the basement they afford independent access 
also to the storage and ad- 


ministration rooms of the a : 
museum. a 

32. The Lecture Hall. 7 
The stairway from the Re- iim Se 
ception Gallery leads to 
the Lecture Hall (Figure STAIR csr ne 


12) likewise thirty by 
forty-six feet, with a height 
of twenty-one feet and 
seating about two hun- 
dred persons. Therostrum 
at the opposite end from 


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the entrance is flanked on shoo teraer 
one hand by the doorway Ficure 12 








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of the elevator, and on the 


other by a door to a cabinet for the speaker, communicat- 
ing by a passage with a private lavatory and with the 
elevator. The cabinet of like size at the opposite end of 
the room would be available for private conferences. The 


156 MUSEUM IDEALS 


windows of the room being on the side, the light is not in 
the eyes of either the lecturer or the audience. 

33. Ambulatories. 34. Restaurant; Orchestra Gallery ; 
organ. Two small exits at the end of the opposite wall lead 
to lobbies with stairways up to doors upon the ambula- 
tories, or promenades, which surmount and express exter- 
nally the corridors about the naves. The stairway by the 
elevator goes no further, the space above being available 
for part of the organ. The elevator and the other stairway 
run to the top of the building, giving access to the restau- 
rant over the Lecture Hall and the kitchen in the gable. 
These positions are chosen to separate these rooms wholly 
from the rest of the museum, and to prevent the escape of 
the odor of cooking into the galleries. Supplies would be 
brought from the basement in a closed compartment under- 
neath the floor of the elevator. A low passage on the level 
of the Lecture Hall and running under the ambulatories 
would permit employees to use one of the spiral stairways 
to the basement when necessary. In this passage and in 
the corresponding one opposite there should be two small 
public lavatories (for women on the elevator side, for men 
on the other). The small stairway next the main entrance 
to the Lecture Hall leads also to a gallery opening on the 
Hall, from which the lantern would be operated when 
illustrated lectures were given. The small exits from the 
Hall open also into the Orchestra Gallery with space for 
thirty or more musicians. From the lobbies doors under 
the small stairways open upon the cross promenades on 
top of the colonnades overlooking the naves. 

35. The Garden Gallery. On the main floor the Garden 
Gallery is the only room in which the windows are at the 
usual height and afford a view out. Central doorways open 
on the external steps descending about the fountain to that 
side of the museum property which is supposed to be laid 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 157 


out as a pleasure ground. Any overflow of new exhibits 
or other objects of special claim might be shown in the 
Garden Gallery. Apart from any use for exhibition the 
prospect on the garden would give the room an interest 
of its own. 

36. The Reading-Room; the Copying- and Photograph- 
Room. The stairway in the adjoining lobby leads to the 
Reading-Room overhead, likewise twenty-eight. by forty- 
six feet, and twenty-one feet high. A cabinet for the libra- 
rian, nine by eleven feet, adjoins the entrance. The attend- 
ant’s desk on the opposite side is flanked on one side by the 
doorway of the elevator, and on the other by the door to 
the Catalogue-Room, eleven by eighteen feet, and having 
a small door on the elevator, for the receipt and delivery 
of books. The wall opposite the windows is wholly occu- 
pied by stacks in three tiers, forming alcoves directed 
toward the windows and hence well lighted, and having 
also windows giving upon the lantern. The alcoves above 
the floor communicate by doorways in the stacks. A book- 
lift occupies the end of the central stack toward the room. 
The end alcoves open into lobbies with small stairways like 
those adjoining the Lecture Hall, and also by a few steps 
down, upon a narrow balcony opposite the Orchestra bal- 
cony. Passages from these lobbies under the ambulatories, 
similar to those across the nave, should also contain small 
public lavatories, for the use of readers. The small stair- 
way in the lobby on the entrance side, like that across the 
nave, runs only to the ambulatory and to the space over 
the entrance stairway and librarian’s cabinet. This space 
would be available for general library purposes. The other 
small stairway and the elevator, run to the top of the build- 
ing, like those across the nave, giving access to the Copy- 
ing- and Photograph-Room above, planned in the main like 
the Reading-Room. The stack space of the two forms a 


158 MUSEUM IDEALS 


unit served by one central booklift. Without the indicated 
expansion into the gable above, it would accommodate 
thirty thousand books and one hundred thousand photo- 
graphs, a large library of fine art. The tables indicated are 
small, each giving space for at most four readers. 

37. Recreation space. The ambulatories about the base 
of the clerestory complete the provisions of the building 
against museum fatigue. The plan provides three recrea- 
tion spaces: one indoors, for all weathers, consisting of the 
square of corridors about the stairway on the main floor, 
together with the Garden Gallery: two outdoors, for fine 
weather, one on the ground, consisting of the garden with 
its stairway approach, the other on the roof, consisting of 
the ambulatories reached by the four spiral stairways and 
also by the lobbies just mentioned. Since but a short 
flight in one of these lobbies separates the restaurant from 
the southwestern ambulatory, doubtless this would come 
to be used as an open-air lunch-room. 

38. The colonnades. The focus of the museum, at its 
centre both in plan and elevation, is the corridor space 
about the stairway on the main floor. From this point its 
life is open to the gaze in every direction. Visitors entering 
are seen as they mount the stairs or pause on the landing. 
Through pillars and arches appear the Reception Gallery, 
where those just arrived delay to choose their way, and the 
Garden Gallery, where others midway in their visit halt for 
the prospect from the windows, or for a turn in the garden. 
The naves open below, and about them, on the level of the 
eye, appear the bays forming their triforium. A door here 
and there may even give a glimpse into the exhibition gal- 
leries beyond, but otherwise visitors to the collections are 
withdrawn from the central life of the building. Through 
the triforium arch of the middle bay of the half octagon at 
the end of each nave the view extends two hundred feet to 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 159 


the limit of the structure: and if there are wings, one hun- 
dred and fifty feet farther to and into them through the 
connecting corridors. Were these corridors constructed of 
glass and used as conservatories, each vista would end in 
a mass of plants and flowers under outdoor light. Finally, 
the view from this point extends also upward between the 
arches of the crossing past the windows of the lantern to 
its apex. 

39. The uses of the naves. The museum uses of the larg- 
est and most ambitiously designed spaces in the building 
remain to be determined. The naves should subserve other 
purposes than that of giving architectural validity to an 
approved museum arrangement. It is here proposed to 
devote them to four factors in museum economy demand- 
ing space apart from the regular galleries: first, monu- 
mental fragments: second, temporary exhibitions: third, 
the display of designs: fourth, assemblies. 

40. Monumental fragments. In the exercise of its fun- 
damental function of the salvage of things worth keeping, 
a museum may at any time be called upon to give asylum 
to objects of greater size than can be shown in galleries 
fitted for general use — as remains of architecture might 
be. Without some large spaces like the naves at its com- 
mand a museum would on such occasions fail perforce in 
its duty. They would seldom occur, but a museum is dedi- 
cated to perpetuity. Meanwhile there is another class of 
objects — namely, plaster reproductions of sculpture else- 
where — which a museum is often called upon to show, 
and which demand exceptional space. This space should 
be wholly apart from that devoted by the museum to its 
works of art. The mingled exhibition of mediate and direct 
utterances of gifted men disenchants where it does not mis- 
inform. To install casts of sculpture separately from, and 
literally on a lower level than, works of art is to give a 


160 MUSEUM IDEALS 


salutary object lesson in the incommensurable value of 
reality and reproduction. 

41. Temporary exhibitions. In a museum dividing its 
collections into exhibits and reserves the exhibition of 
‘any given object is liable to be intermittent. But the 
risks of mounting and dismounting, and the right of the 
public to see masterpieces at all times set limits to the 
practicable changes of exhibition, and the freedom to 
show selected objects without disturbing those already in 
place may be a valuable one — as in the case of notable 
acquisitions, or opportunities for illustrative exhibits. 
Again, the museum could offer the naves for temporary 
exhibitions from outside sources — wandering collections, 
or other loans — without interfering in any way with the 
regular administration of its own resources. It could be 
hospitable without suffering for it. 

42. The display of designs. Another class of exhibits — — 
both temporary and of large size—for whose display 
the naves would be available, are not yet to be called 
works of art. The public museum of a city may appro- 
priately be the place where sketches and models of pro- 
jected monuments and schemes of city adornment are 
submitted to the judgment of those in authority and the 
inspection of others interested. The conditions offered 
by the naves might even be more advantageous than 
those which would surround the monument when exe- 
cuted. The light would be reliable, the space doubtless 
in most cases ample, and large models of sculpture or 
architecture could be examined not only from the ground 
but from the triforium bays. Beside ensuring these fav- 
orable conditions, exhibition at the museum would call 
in advance to the attention of all, works of art designed 
for the eventual enjoyment of all. 

43. Receptions ; concerts ; plays; readings ; pageants. For 


A MUSEUM WITHOUT SKYLIGHTS 161 


another purpose, large spaces apart from the rooms de- 
voted to collections, and independently accessible, have 
become an acknowledged desideratum of museum plan- 
ning. It is recognized that a building full of artistic mem- 
ories and expressing in stately form a pious regard for 
them presents an appropriate setting for gatherings more 
or less directly related to the life of the imagination. Peo- 
ple may wish to come together socially to congratulate 
each other over the treasures acquired. They may wish 
to see drama, or hear literature from, or relating to, the 
past, in the atmosphere produced by tangible objects that 
gave another expression to the same instinct of creation. 
They may wish to listen to music under the spell of other 
arts. They may wish to join in a work of codperative art 
— ceremony or spectacle — under the same spell. To 
oppose these wishes would be to deny to the works of 
art preserved in museum galleries the right to share as 
fragments in solemnities and gayeties such as they were 
made to adorn intact. 

44, The two museum ideals. The picture of a possible 
museum which the imaginary Journey now at an end 
leaves in the mind differs radically from that presented by 
most real museums. It is not that of an institution where 
things too precious to throw away have little by little 
been gathered and are now preserved in more or less hap- 
- hazard fashion for such pilgrims as may come to worship 
them. The present plans speak everywhere of a resolute 
purpose to make the most in every way and for every 
one of everything the building may come to contain. We 
may regret the passive ideal, and wonder whether after 
all it may not bear richer fruit: but the active ideal is still 
- untried, and it is too soon as yet to draw the comparison. 


II 
GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR IN THE LIGHTING PROBLEM‘ 
ATTIC LIGHT VERSUS SIDE OR TOP LIGHT 


In the present day of voluminous scientific publication 
there is risk in claiming that any large factor in an im- 
portant question has hitherto mainly escaped considera- 
tion. In regard to the problem of the lighting of build- 
ings, whether artificially or naturally, the claim has 
nevertheless just been made from the standpoint of the 
lighting engineer; and it is substantiated from the stand- 
point of the museum official. Professor Ferree writes: 
“‘Up to the present time the work on the problem of light- 
ing has been confined almost entirely to the source of light. 
The goal of the lighting engineer has been to get the maxi- 
mum output of light for a given expenditure of energy. 
Until recent years little attention has been given to the 
problem in its relation to the eye.’’? In like manner the | 
goal of the museum architect has been to get the maxi- 
mum of light upon walls and cases within general limits 
of construction. This is the end principally sought by 
Professor Magnus and Professor Tiede, whose rules have 
been the chief contributions of the past generation to the’ 
theory of lighting picture galleries; and the same direc- 
tion of inquiry has been followed in the demonstration 
of lines of equal illumination in a picture zone given by 
Professor Wagner.* To the problem of museum lighting 


1 Reprinted from the Architectural Record (New York), August and September, 
1915. 

2 “The Problem of Lighting in its Relation to the Efficiency of the Eye.” 
Paper read before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, April 4, 
1913. Science, July 17, 1914 (N.S.), vol. xz, no. 1020. 

§ Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. 1v, 6, 4 (Leipzig, 1893), p. 223 f. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 163 


in its relation to the eye but incidental attention has been 
devoted, 

Yet. in museums the psychological element is more than 
half of the problem of lighting. Sight is a function of two 
variables: the illumination of the object, and the condi- 
tion of the organ; and two everyday facts indicate that 
the latter is the more important factor for the delicate 
seeing which museum visiting involves. First: it is well 
known that visual discrimination is at its best under a 
moderate intensity of light. As an object is more and 
more brilliantly illuminated, our power of seizing its de- 
tails diminishes. The device called the Claude Lorraine 
glass aims to bring out the beauty of a landscape by re- 
flecting it in a mirror constructed to tone down its bright- 
ness. Second: exposure to brilliant light dulls the eye at 
the time and afterward for objects moderately illumi- 
nated. A white picket fence in the sun is an effective 
screen to objects which otherwise would be discernible 
through it; and on going outdoors at night we do not at 
once see so well as later. 

From these two facts the inference is that light open- 
ings of almost any dimensions customary in other build- 
ings would suffice for museum purposes, if only the open- 
ings themselves and reflections from them were kept out 
of sight of the visitor, as they are not in other buildings. 
The more important consideration is not the size of the 
sources of light, but their position. The crux of the prob- 
lem lies in protection from glare. 

Two positions have hitherto been mainly chosen: that 
of ordinary windows, giving what is called “‘side light”’; 
and that of openings in the ceiling and roof, giving “top 
light.’ Of the first two buildings planned in Europe ex- 
pressly for museum purposes, one, the Old Museum in 
Berlin (1824-28), was lighted only by windows; the other, 


164 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the Old Pinacothek in Munich (1826-36), chiefly by ceil- 
ing lights. This method was one of two architectural 
novelties embodied in the Old Pinacothek, the other being 
its arrangement of rooms along a corridor. The choice 
of top light for the main galleries is said to have been dic- 
tated by the belief that Greek temples were hypethral, 
that is, open to the sky; from which it was inferred that 
Greek taste demanded to see works of art under light from 
above. It has since become doubtful whether Greek tem- 
ples were ever hypethral by intention; and the method 
of their lighting is now admittedly a puzzle. But in spite 
of the weakening of the classical argument for top light 
in galleries of art, strong reasons, chiefly those of economy 
in space, have maintained it as the standard lighting. 
With top light, all four walls of a room may be used for 
exhibition; and however large the area of a building, it 
can all be covered by a one-story_construction, within a 
perimeter carried higher. 

In a high building, the lower stories are necessarily 
lighted by windows; and in museums of science, which 
are commonly of several stories, side light is apt to pre- 
dominate. It has also always been used in museums of 
art for smaller galleries, or cabinets, designed for objects 
demanding close inspection. 

Judged by the canon here adopted — the avoidance 
of glare — both systems of lighting leave much to be de- 
sired for museum purposes. Under top light, the visitor’s 
eyes are subjected to more or less glare from five sources. 
These are (1) direct glare from the ceiling opening — con- 
spicuous in long galleries; (2) indirect glare (a) from be- 
low — conspicuous as the image of the ceiling opening 
in desk cases; (b) from above — conspicuous as a shim- 
mer on canvases hung high; (c) from in front — conspic- 
uous as the image of the visitor himself on the glass of 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 165 


upright cases and low hung pictures; (3) indirect glare 
from sun spots, or the areas directly lighted by the sun 
through the ceiling light.!_ Dr. Koetschau lately called top 
light “a necessary evil” ? and Mr. Seager flatly declares 
“the principle of having a top or ceiling light is wrong.” * 

With side light there is an oppressive glare from the 
windows, and dazzling reflections on canvases or cases 
opposite. Of “the accepted idea of a natural history 
museum, namely, of halls about sixty-five feet wide, 
lighted on each side, the windows being as large and the 
rooms as long and as unimpeded as possible,’ Mr. C. C. 
Brewer writes: 7 

If a person passes along one of these rooms and notes carefully 
what he has seen or can see from the central aisle, he will find 
that with desk or table cases he has noticed an enormous area of 
reflections on glass, and a certain number of small dark objects 
through the glass. If the room is filled with larger cases of mam- 
mals, etc., he has again seen a great many reflections, and in ad- 
dition the silhouettes of many animals and occasionally the side 
of some, really almost well lighted. It may be that the visitor is 
really bent on examining the exhibits, and industriously examines 
the cases in two or three rooms about two hundred feet long, by 
which time, having been occupied in dodging reflections, he is 


weary, and walks hurriedly up the centre aisle of the remaining 
rooms, gaining nothing thereby but additional fatigue.* 


Most museum visitors will be able to corroborate much 
of Mr. Brewer’s account from their own experience. In 
fact, the normal use of a museum gallery may be said to 
forbid without appeal the use of low windows — that is, 
openings in the wall proper —as sources of light. A 
museum gallery is a place where people are to move about 


1 Amusing examples of the reflections of light openings on desk cases are given 
in the illustrations, pp. 118-19 of Museumskunde, vol. vir. (1911.) 

2 Museumskunde, vol. vit (1911), p. 85. 

3S. H. Seager, “The Lighting of Picture Galleries and Museums.” Journal 
of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. xx (1913), p. 44 

4 C. C. Brewer, “American Museum Buildings,” Journal of the Royal Insti- 
tute of British Architects, vol. xx, no. 11 (April 12, 1913), p. 388. 


166 MUSEUM IDEALS 


inspecting its contents. In this purpose it differs radi- 
cally from a living-room or an assembly hall, where peo- 
ple are to seat themselves or where seats are placed for 
them, out of the glare from the windows; and where see- 
ing is not their only or their chief occupation. Every turn 
that directs a museum visitor toward the window wall 
of a side-lighted gallery exposes his eyes to a glare that 
for the time makes good seeing difficult if not impossible. 
To meet this difficulty it is recommended in the books 
that the window sill be placed not lower than the visitor’s 
eyes. Although soberly proposed, this remedy is patently 
ineffective. The range of vision with erect head extends 
sixty degrees above the horizontal, and a sill at the level 
of the eye cuts out only that glare which may come from 
below the horizon, from the ground or buildings. Glare 
from the sky remains, diminishing as the sill is raised to 
higher levels. At six feet, to cut off any disturbing view 
of the sky, the visitor must place himself within a few 
inches of the window wall; at seven feet, within a foot 
or two; and within greater but still impracticably small 
distances for any height of sill below the upper limit of 
his main vision as he walks about inspecting exhibits. 
In a room of moderate height this range covers at least 
all of the space below an appropriately placed cornice. 
Hence no light openings should be placed in the wall 
proper. The principle of the avoidance of glare demands 
the abandonment of side light in museum galleries in 
which the visitor is supposed to walk about. According 
to the Messrs. Papworth, “‘side lights are objectionable, 
except for rooms in which the chief pursuits are those of 
daily life, such as the apartments provided for the offi- 
cers, servants, reading-rooms, etc.” } 


1 J. W. and W. Papworth, Museums, Libraries and Picture Galleries (London, 
1853), p. 12. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 167 





Sie 








SaaEEaEEnemee 
SIDE LIGHT TOP LIGHT 
pone 33 


> 
. 
AD 
e 
ait 
? 








ATTIC, or 
CLERESTORY LIGHT. 


Dracram 1 


At their extremes, top light is vertical and side light 
horizontal. One other direction is possible: a diagonal 
between the two. The light may come, not from the wall 
proper of the room, nor through the roof of the attic over 
it, but through the wall of the attic made a part of this 
room. By extending the attic above the roof of adjoining 
construction the method becomes a means of lighting 
interior spaces. The attic becomes a clerestory. This 
third possible solution of the problem of museum lighting 


168 MUSEUM IDEALS 


proposes that the sources of light should be windows, but 
windows with sills at or above the cornice of the room 
lighted. The three methods are compared in Diagram 1. 

Under the name of “‘studio”’ or “atelier” lighting, the 
illumination of works of art from high windows is widely 
acknowledged as the ideal. The method conforms to the 
canon of Leonardo da Vinci that “the painter should 
work under a light in which the shadows of objects are 
equal to their height.’”’! Dr. Waagen advocated high 
side light for the Old Museum in Berlin because it was 
the illumination under which pictures were produced, and 
the best light to work by would be the best light for 
seeing.” 

Professor Briicke mentions the frequent use of ‘“‘so- 
called high side light” and gives reasons for its good suc- 
cess. Professor Wagner describes its advantages for 
pictures and adds: | 

The proper lighting for collections of works of art of every 
kind is the high side light from one side just recommended for 
picture galleries, especially when it comes in a northerly direc- 
tion, as in ateliers. This method of introducing light offers most 
of the advantages of ceiling light without its disadvantages. It 
is particularly favorable when the light-opening, as in ateliers, 


can be continued above the wall, cutting into the roof and loft, 
or through the vaulting.‘ 


Studio or atelier light in both the forms here called ex- 
terior and interior attic lighting is already illustrated in 
many museums and almost all instances are singled out 
for especial praise. True attic lighting — from penetra- 
tions in an exterior wall above a cornice — is provided 
in several galleries of the Vatican. The alcoves of the 
Belvedere (1770), the Sala a Croce Greca (1780) and the 


1 Libro della Pittura, cap. 85. 2 Papworth, p. 69. 

* Ernst Briicke, Bruchstiicke aus der Theorie der bildenden Kiinste (Leipzig, 
1877), p. 175. 

* Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. rv, 6, 4, p. 257. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 169 


Museo Chiaramonti (1810) all receive light from open- 
ings in vaulting; and by both Mr. Clipston Sturgis and 
Mr. Edmund M. Wheelwright of the Commission of 
Observation sent to Europe by the Museum of Fine 
Arts in Boston in 1904, the lighting of all is commended 
in varying measure.! The porticoes of antique sculpture 
at the Naples Museum, which were apparently loggias 
when the building fulfilled its original purpose as a cay- 
alry barrack (1587), receive a like and very advanta- 
geous light from windows high in the walled-up arches 
(1790). An adaptation of attic light to special conditions 
of reconstruction was adopted by Professor Treu (1891) 
for the principal galleries of casts at the Albertinum in 
Dresden. Here an interior room receives its light from 
the roof through an opening on one side of a vaulted ceil- 
ing. Professor Treu found the results notably satisfac- 
tory. Both the dazzling of the visitor’s eyes produced 
by lower light and the unrelieved shadows in the sculp- 
ture produced by light from overhead were avoided.? Mr. 
Brewer found Blackstone Hall in the Chicago Art Insti- 
tute, lighted from windows on one side at fifteen feet 
from the floor, “‘one of the best lit that I saw.’’’ 

To most people the Sistine Chapel (built in 1473; 157 
feet long, 52 wide, 59 high) is rather a museum gallery 
than a church; and it is not impossible that the architect 
had in mind the effect of the paintings filling the lower 
part of its walls. The lighting is by clerestory windows 
running above a gallery at some thirty-five feet from the 
floor; and has been called by competent observers the 
most beautiful light for pictures they had ever seen. Sev- 


1 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. 111 (Bos- 
ton, 1905), p. 35. 

2 G. Treu, “Die Sammlung der Abgiisse im Albertinum. zu Dresden,” Arch- 
aeologischer Anzeiger: Beiblatt zum Jahrbuch des Archaeologischen Instituts, vol. 1. 
(1891.) 

3 Brewer, p. 381. 


170 MUSEUM IDEALS 


eral buildings erected expressly for museum purposes 
contain halls lighted from a clerestory. The west range 
of the Smithsonian Institution building at Washington 
(1847-55), consisting of a nave with clerestory and aisles, 
one lighted by windows, was originally planned as a read- 
ing-room, but since 1866 has been used for collections 
of natural history. The main hall of the Kelvingrove 
Museum at Glasgow (built 1893-1901; 137 feet long, 62 
wide, 88 high) is another example. Sir W. Armstrong 
has called the ground floor plan of this museum “‘more 
successful than anything else of the same kind in Eu- 
rope.” The gallery containing the zodélogical collection 
of the museum at Perth, West Australia (1895), is re- 
ported as “admirably lighted by clerestory windows.” ! 
The central “Basilica” of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum 
in Berlin (1898-1904) receives its light from a clerestory. 
At the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Tapestry 
Gallery in the new Evans Building is admirably lighted 
from windows on both sides above a cornice twenty-seven 
feet from the floor. Of the central hall of the Decora- 
tive Arts Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 
New York (1910), which is also lighted by clerestory 
windows, Mr. Brewer writes: “If only this clerestory 
lighting could be adapted to lower rooms, we should prob- 
ably arrive somewhere near to the ideal of a perfect pic- 
ture gallery.’’? 


1 Museums Journal, vol. m1, no. 6 (December, 1903), p. 179. 

2 Brewer, p. 379. The lighting in the Rotunda of the National Museum at 
Washington from lunettes at sixty-two feet from the floor and a central sky- 
light in the dome at one hundred and twenty-five feet is compared favorably by 
Mr. Brewer with that in other rooms. “The Rotunda is much more restfully 
though amply lighted, but it seemed the central skylight might even here have 
been omitted to advantage”’ (p. 392). 

Since the publication of the present essay in the Architectural Record, Dr. 
Karl Koetschau has described in Museumskunde (vol. x1, 1915, p. 134 f.) a 
museum plan based on obtaining high side light from inclined windows. A pat- 
ent for the scheme has been applied for by the author, the architect, Peter Bir- 
kenholz, of Munich and Switzerland. High side lighting from inclined windows 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 171 


These approving judgments upon the general method 
of introducing light above a cornice, and upon individual 
galleries, may be taken to refer chiefly to the effect of 
this illumination in bringing out the character of objects. 
It remains to go further into the question of the compara- 
tive merits of top light and attic light in the matter of 
the avoidance of glare in the eyes of spectators. 

In Diagrams 3 to 17 four galleries are compared, three 
top-lighted and one attic-lighted. All are supposed thirty- 
four feet square. Square galleries are chosen because 
they present the best conditions in respect to glare under 
both systems of lighting. For attic light, oblong galler- 
ies are somewhat inferior, and for top light markedly so. 
The attic-lighted gallery has a height equal to its other 
dimensions, with a cornice at twenty-one feet from the 
floor. This is the average height of the picture zone in 
fourteen galleries tabulated by Professor Wagner.! The 
window above is eleven feet high and thirteen feet broad, 
in the centre of the attic wall and reaching to the ceiling. 
The height of one of the top-lighted galleries — twenty- 
four feet —is to its other dimensions approximately in 
the proportion recommended by Magnus, namely, 7.85 
to 11, or nearly 5 to 7. This, or a smaller ratio, is not 
infrequent in American galleries. The height of the sec- 
ond, twenty-eight feet, approximately illustrates the pro- 
portion recommended by ‘Tiede, namely, 75 to 91, or 
nearly 5 to 6.2. The third is a cube like the attic-lighted 
gallery, according to the rule stated to Professor Wag- 
ner by Mr. R. Redgrave, formerly of the South Ken- 


is also the proposal of Arthur Deane whose article on “The Accepted Design 
for the Belfast Municipal Art Gallery and Museum” (Museums Journal, Sep- 
tember, 1914, vol. xiv, no. 3, p. 95) contains critical remarks about the top- 
lighting of pictures and proposes an adaptation of weaving-shed construction. 
1 Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. tv, 6, 4, p. 237. 
2 In the first building of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston the lower picture 
galleries were twenty-four feet high, the higher twenty-eight. 


172 MUSEUM IDEALS 


sington Museum. Mr. Redgrave’s opinion was that the 
height of a gallery to the ceiling light should be equal to 
its width; this proportion avoiding reflections, if the 
width of the light is one half that of the gallery.1 This 
is the width here adopted for the ceiling light (Magnus 
one third, Tiede one half, Weissman independently one 
half;? in practice often greater), its area being one quarter 
that of the floor of the room. In the group of galleries 
cited by Professor Wagner, the relative area varies from 
seventeen to fifty per cent.* As the larger the ceiling light 
the greater the glare from it, a low mean between these 
extremes presents the case favorably for top light. 

Although the area of the window is but an eighth the 
floor area of the room, it would appear that the illumina- 
tion from it would be not far from equal to that from the 
ceiling light. The restriction of the glazing of the roof to 
the slopes, as shown in Diagram 1, now very generally 
recognized as essential to good top-lighting, materially 
cuts down the area of the ceiling light through which 
light in any part of the room is received from the sky. 
Moreover, light from a ceiling opening passes through 
two layers of glass, losing forty per cent in the process, 
according to the estimate recorded by Professor Wagner, 
and from the window through but one.‘ Space for an- 
other window of half the breadth of the central one and 
on either side of it is indicated in the panelling of the attic 
shown in the diagrams; but experience goes to prove that 
the increase would very seldom indeed be needed. Accord- 
ing to Professor Wagner, the painter Kaulbach and others 
found the gallery constructed on Professor Tiede’s meas- 

1 Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. tv, 6, 4, p. 237. 

2 A. W. Weissman, “Gallery Building, Journal of the Royal Institute of British 
Architects, vol. xtv (8d series), 3d quarterly part, nos. 11-15. (1907.) 


3 Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. tv, 6, 4, p. 237. 
4 Idem, p. 238. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 173 


urements at times almost too much lighted.! In the large 
top-lighted galleries of the Brera at Milan the light comes 
through one layer of glass, there being no ceiling light. 
The area of the opening in three of the galleries is but 
a sixteenth the floor area of the room; yet Mr. Sturgis 
remarks: “Seen under average (not really dark) winter 
conditions, there is apparently ample light at all times.” ? 

For convenience of inspection, the results under given 
conditions for all four galleries are presented at once in 
Diagrams 5 to 7. No account is taken of the arrangement 
of the skylights in the roof. Were the opaque zenith 
shown in Diagram 1 provided, it would cut out a portion 
of the patches of glare indicated in the diagrams, leaving 
a strip on one or other or both edges. 

Semi-transparent diffusing curtains or screens capable 
of being drawn over light openings to exclude direct sun 
are a necessity of any system of museum lighting. With 
top light these are horizontal or inclined, and are gen- 
erally placed and controlled in the loft above the gallery. 
With a window they are hung perpendicularly like domes- 
tic curtains, and may be controlled from the room. The 
difference in convenience in favor of window curtains, 
due to the inaccessibility and exposure to dust of sky- 
light curtains, can hardly be appreciated by any one who 
has not to do with museum housekeeping.’ 

The method of determining the boundaries of the re- 
flections from the light openings is illustrated in Diagram 
2. The angle of reflection being equal to the angle of inci- 

1 Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. tv, 6, 4, p. 229. 

2 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. 11; The 
Museum Commission in Europe (Boston, 1905), p. 26. 

3 In the side-lighted room especially built at the Ryksmuseum at Amsterdam 
for Rembrandt’s Night Watch, curtains of tracing linen are hung before the 
window. Report of the Royal Dutch Commission, quoted in Communications 


to the Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, vol. 1 (December, 1904), 
p. 60. 


174 MUSEUM IDEALS 






gency (ven) 
Za a 
4 





OPPOSITE OVERNEAD, 






va ee 
\ 
g oa (RerLecTED IMAGE 


DIAGRAM 2 


dence, the image of an object before a plane mirror is at 
the same distance behind it, of the same magnitude, and 
equally inclined to it; in other words, is the symmetric 
counterpart of the object. The study of reflections is 
not without its difficulties, and the diagram is here in- 
troduced to make the matter plain. A puzzling passage 
in a recent essay by a well-known museum architect reads: 
‘Tf the dark space around the ceiling is five feet wide, 
only the roof openings opposite can light the picture, and 
the light from the openings on the same side, which causes 
the annoying glimmering of the picture surfaces, is com- 
pletely shut out.’ The diagram shows that the lower and 
more obtrusive part of the glare on a canvas from a ceil- 
ing light is due to rays from the opposite, not the over- 


1 Tt is noteworthy that Dante states the law of reflection as exactly as it could 
be stated by a physicist: 


“Come quando dall’ acqua o dallo specchio 
Salta lo raggio all’ opposta parte 
Salendo su per lo modo parecchio 
A quel che scende, e tanto si diparte 
Dal cader della pietra in egual tratta 
Si come mostra esperienza ed arte.” 
Purgatorio, xv, 16-21. 


““When a ray leaps up in the opposite direction from water or a mirror, it 
rises in the same way that it falls, departing just as much from the line of a fall- 
ing body (the perpendicular) within the same space, as observation and theory 
show.” 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 175 


head opening. Mr. Sturgis remarks that at the Thomy 
Thiéry Gallery of the Louvre it was sought to exclude the 
influence of the opposite top light by opening the ceiling 
directly on the pictures instead of at the centre, but with- 
out any marked success. “Clearly the preponderance of 
light came from the opening opposite and not from that 
directly above.” ‘“‘The freedom from reflections on the 
pictures was due to the fact that they were hung low and 
not to the fact that light was directly over them.” ! 

In the present comparison between top light and attic 
light in the matter of glare the five sources already men- 
tioned will be considered in order. 

(1) The comparison for direct glare is indicated in the 





DracraM 3. Tor Licur 


black circles of Diagram 3 representing the top-lighted 
gallery thirty-four feet in height, and of Diagram 4 rep- 


1 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. 111, 
The Museum Commission in Europe (Boston, 1905), p. 28. 


176 MUSEUM IDEALS 


resenting the attic-lighted gallery of the same height. 
The highest top-lighted gallery is chosen because it pre- 
sents the case for top light most favorably. The height 
of the visitor’s eye is taken throughout the diagrams at 
five feet. In Diagrams 3 and 4 the floor is divided into 
nine equal sections, and the visitor is supposed to be at 
the centre of each. 

The white sectors represent the horizontal angle sub- 
tended by the ceiling light or window, and indicate how 
far the visitor must turn from the wall before beginning 
to receive direct glare from the source of light. In the 
top-lighted rooms there would be a space in the centre, 
in which the ceiling light would be entirely out of the 
maximum range of vision with erect head — about sixty 
degrees altitude — in whatever direction the glance was 
turned. This area would vary from about a ninth of the 
floor area of the thirty-four-foot gallery, to an inconsid- 
erable fraction of the twenty-four-foot gallery. Elsewhere 
in the thirty-four-foot top-lighted gallery the vertical 
angle subtended by the ceiling light increases to a maxi- 
mum, at the walls, of about half the horizontal angle. 
In the attic-lighted gallery, the window would be con- 
cealed in like manner by the brow of a visitor standing at 
any point within about a third of the area of the room 
— that nearest the window wall — and would be above 
the ordinary range of convenient seeing at all practicable 
points. In this gallery the vertical angle subtended by 
the window is about three quarters the horizontal angle 
in the outer positions indicated, and about half in the 
central positions. 

These various conditions express the general fact that 
from the floor of a room an area central on the ceiling is 
seen either wholly without foreshortening (at the centre) 
or somewhat foreshortened (at the walls); while an area 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 177 


at the top of a wall is either seen equally foreshortened 
(at the opposite wall) or is entirely invisible by foreshort- 
ening (at the window wall). One point favors top light. 
The ceiling light would at no point descend so low — 





Diacram 4. Artic Licut 


about thirty degrees — into the maximum field of vision 
as would the window seen from near the opposite wall, 
although nearly as low in a twenty-four-foot gallery seen 
from one corner. Three points favor attic light. The 
area totally exempt from direct glare is much larger. 
Moreover, the sectors show that the visitor has a larger 
freedom of turning without exposure to direct glare. 
Finally, the exempt area in a top-lighted gallery being 
in the centre, no position of the doorway will spare the 
visitor direct glare from the source of light on entering; 
while in an attic-lighted room the doorway may be placed 
in the exempt area — that is, near the window wall — as 


178 MUSEUM IDEALS 


shown in Diagram 4, so that the visitor may begin the 
inspection of the room undazzled. On the whole, the 
comparison in the matter of direct glare may be taken 
to incline noticeably, though not decisively, in favor of 
attic light. 

(2a) The rectangles in Diagram 3 and the trapezoids 
in Diagram 4 represent the reflection of the ceiling light 
and the window on the floor of the gallery. These reflec- 
tions change in position and more or less in shape for 
every change in the standpoint of the observer. The re- 
flection of the ceiling light is much the larger, both on 
account of its larger source and its shorter path, and 
would be larger still in the twenty-eight and twenty-four- 
foot galleries. Further, it is more or less directly beneath 
the visitor’s eyes, instead of several feet away, as in the 
attic-lighted room. The disturbance from this source is 
negligible where, as in most galleries, the floor is covered 
with some dark, non-reflecting material; but the position 
of the figures reveals the cause of one of the most common 
complaints against top light in museums. Drawn some- 
what closer to the visitor’s position and made somewhat 
smaller, the rectangles and trapezoids would represent 
also the reflections from the surfaces of horizontal glass 
cases: so-called desk, or table cases.! Diagram 3 shows 
that with top light these reflections would lie upon the 
glass almost or quite directly over the object looked at, 
effectively concealing it except in so far as the visitor’s 
head and body intervene. With attic light they would 
never lie under the visitor’s eyes, but always on one side, 
from a few feet away when large to a few inches when 
small, in the direction toward the window, either diag- 
onally in front or on either hand. The diagram makes 


1S. H. Seager, p. 52. “The most annoying effect of all is perhaps to be seen 
when horizontal glass specimen cases are placed in a strongly top-lighted room.” 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 179 


plain the imperative need of window light for desk cases 
that every one has felt who has ever sought to make out 
their contents under light from the ceiling. In the matter 
of reflections from below, the comparison results decisively 
in favor of the attic light. 

(2b) Diagrams 5 to 7 represent reflections on the walls 
of the four galleries, and on canvases hung perpendicu- 
larly, as seen from different standpoints on the floor, and 
indicate also what the reflections would be from the glass 
of cases. These reflections fall lower as the observer ap- 
proaches the reflecting surface and rise higher as he re- 
cedes from it. : 

From incidental references in the books and from ex- 
perience, it may be assumed that the most restful seeing 
demands that a line drawn from the eye to the top of the 
object should form with the horizontal an angle not greater 
than about thirty degrees. Professor Magnus placed the 
top of a picture zone in a gallery thirty-six feet (11 m.) 
wide at nineteen feet (5.95 m.) from the floor; and Pro- 
fessor Tiede, in a gallery thirty feet (9.1 m.) wide, at eight- 
een feet (5.65 m.). The latter remarks that this height 
requires only a moderate raising of the glance.' Professor 
Treu recommends about this height (5.5. m.) for the cor- 
nice of a sculpture gallery.?, From the centre of either the 
Magnus or the Tiede Gallery, eighteen or fifteen feet from 
the wall, the angle to the top of the picture zone would 
be about forty degrees; but taking Mr. Papworth’s opin- 
ion that the largest pictures should not be seen at a less 
distance than twenty-five feet, or approximately three 
quarters across either gallery, the angle would reduce to 
- about thirty degrees.? According to this criterion, to see 


1 A. Tiede, “‘Museumsbaukunde,” Abschnitt 1 from the Baukunde des Arch- 
itekten, Band m1, Theil 2 (Berlin, 1898), p. 73. 

2 G. Treu, Die Sammlung der Abgiisse im Albertinum zu Dresden.” (1891.) 

3 Papworth, p. 54. 


180 MUSEUM IDEALS 


an object reaching to six feet from the floor — for ex- 
ample, a picture three feet high hung over a baseboard, 
or dado, of the same height — the spectator might stand 
as near as three feet, a distance which may be regarded 
as the limit of approach, except for the scrutiny of par- 
ticular features. If the top of the object reached to eight 
feet from the floor — for example, a picture five feet in 
height — seven or eight feet would be the limit of ap- 
proach. If to fifteen feet — for example, a picture twelve 
feet high — the limit would be eighteen feet. If to twenty 
feet, the limit would be twenty-five feet. 


‘ 
\ 


| Cott erg eens tate | 


\' 
iy 





Diacram 5. Opposite WALL; FROM NEAR BY 


Pictures reaching to approximately these heights are 
shown in Diagrams 5 to 7, seen from approximately these 
distances. Diagram 5 shows by dotted lines the reflec- 
tions of the ceiling lights in the three top-lighted galleries, 
on any wall, and by full lines the reflections of the window — 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 181 


in the attic-lighted room on the opposite wall, as they 
would appear to a spectator three, four, and eight feet 
away. Under the reflections on the right, seen at three 
feet away, the Mona Lisa (31 inches high, 20 inches broad, 
or .77 m. by .53 m.) is hung. Under the reflections on 
the left, seen at four feet, the picture is The Fighting 
Téméraire of Turner (353 inches high by 473 inches 
broad). The central picture seen at eight feet away is 
The Entombment by Titian, at the Louvre (4 feet 10 
inches high, by 7 feet broad; or 1.48 m. by 2.15 m.). The 
reflections from the window are above the canvases, and 
those from the ceiling lights are at greater or less distances 
above the frames. 

It proves on investigation that larger pictures would 
not escape reflections from a window opposite unless the 
spectator were to place himself beyond the best distance 
for seeing. The case is otherwise for the ceiling lights 
represented. The limit of height to which a canvas could 
be raised without receiving reflections from above, sup- 
posing the spectator to retreat until he saw the top at 
an angle of thirty degrees — that is, within the best see- 
ing range — would, for the twenty-four-foot light, be 
nine feet six inches from the floor, the distance being 
eight feet; for the twenty-eight-foot light, thirteen feet, 
the distance being fourteen feet; and for the thirty-four- 
foot light, nineteen feet, the distance being twenty-five 
feet. Supposing nineteen feet to be about the height of 
the picture zone, this last result confirms Mr. Redgrave’s 
assertion that in a top-lighted gallery as high as it is 
broad, and with a ceiling light half its breadth, there are 
no reflections on the pictures; supposing, it must be 
added, that the spectator always views them at the 
distances at which they can most comfortably be seen as 
wholes. 


182 MUSEUM IDEALS 


The establishment of a limit of five feet in height, or 
eight from the floor, for pictures shown on the opposite 
wall of the attic-lighted room, is a point against attic light 
to be regarded as more than counterbalancing the very 
much larger area on the wall occupied by the glare from 
the ceiling light. Yet measurements of two hundred pic- 
tures taken at random from the chief galleries in Europe 
and America indicate that two thirds of museum pictures 
are below five feet in height. Under the attic light pro- 
posed the opposite wall is hence suitable not alone for 
small pictures, but for a large majority of all pictures. 
Dr. Salin is reported to have said that objects over eight 
feet from the floor cannot be looked at for any length 
of time without undue fatigue.! The remark doubtless 
referred chiefly to case objects; but it has its applica- 
tion also to pictures. It should not be forgotten further 
that the whole upper part of this opposite wall would be 
a superb position in which to show tapestries or any other 
objects, artistic or scientific, which were devoid of sheen. 
The pictures or other objects shown below would also 
possess an éclat of coloring unknown in top-lighted gal- 
leries. 

The tilting of a canvas raises the reflections upon it, 
and is the expedient customarily resorted to when skeen 
upon it is burdensome. These diagrams do not take into 
account any inclination of the canvases from the perpen- 
dicular, both because the practicable amount is uncer- 
tain, and because the larger the picture the more undig- 
nified does any. considerable tilting become. It may be 
recalled that in the Vatican Gallery large pictures oppo- 
site low side light are placed on hinges, and the visitor who 
wishes to see them exempt from all glare is free to move 


1 Martin Mayer, “‘Betrachtung eines Bautechnikers tiber die Einrichtung von 
Schausammlungen,”’ Museumskunde, vol. v1 (1910), p. 161. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 183 


them as he pleases. This method has the advantage over 
tipping that it is perfectly effective and may be used with 
the largest canvases without interfering with the state- 
liness of their effect. The Sistine Madonna is permanently 
installed at an angle to the window lighting it. 

On cases, when seen as is customary from perhaps 
three feet away, the reflection from the attic light oppo- 
site would still fall eighteen inches above the observer’s 
eyes; and were he to stand off to double that distance or 
beyond, it would fall wholly above a case of the usual 
height of seven feet six inches or eight feet. 

On the whole, the comparison for reflections on the 
opposite wall may be said to result unfavorably to attic 
light, although under the conditions here proposed its 
handicap would in all probability seldom or never be 
noticed, the freedom of installation it allows being in 
general amply sufficient. 

A square attic-lighted room differs from a square top- 
lighted gallery in that the conditions of illumination differ 
from wall to wall. In the top-lighted gallery they are 
identical. Their different lighting from a window is a 
point of signal advantage in museum economy. Objects 
belonging in the same gallery on account of their simi- 
larity of origin or nature are never of the same rank or 
importance, nor are they all seen at their best under iden- 
tical conditions of illumination. The managers of exhi- 
bitions of art in particular willingly acknowledge that 
opportunities to keep some objects back, put others for- 
ward, and otherwise to adapt their lighting to their char- 
acter, are most welcome. 

A comparison of the identical conditions present on 
the transverse walls of the three top-lighted galleries with 
the changed conditions on those of the attic-lighted room 
results decisively in favor of attic light, as Diagrams 6 


184 MUSEUM IDEALS 


and 7 show. Diagram 6 represents the reflections on a 
transverse wall as they would appear to a spectator 
seated at the centre of the gallery, in a position to inspect 
at leisure its most important exhibits. It is to be noted 
that when seated in this position in the attic-lighted gal- 





DiacraM 6. TRANSVERSE WALL; FROM CENTRE OF GALLERY 


lery the visitor would be unable to see any of the window 
in the next gallery, and would have in view only its least 
illuminated wall. The broader picture indicated is the 
Night Watch of Rembrandt (11 feet 9 inches high; 14 feet 
3 inches broad; or 3.59 m. by 4.35 m.) installed with the 
canvas at a foot from the floor as it is now placed in the 
new room especially built for it at the Ryksmuseum at 
Amsterdam. For this new room dimensions have been 
chosen not far from those of the gallery here proposed. 
It is five feet narrower on the picture wall, and two feet 
deeper in front of the picture, and is lighted by a window 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 185 


on the left, with a sill at about seven feet six inches from 
the floor. To an observer in the position indicated the 
twenty-four-foot ceiling light gives reflections on the 
canvas, but none of the other three sources. The higher 
picture represented is Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna di 
San Giobbe at Venice (15 feet 3 inches high by 8 feet 
3 inches broad; or 4.66 m. by 2.52 m.) installed likewise 
at a foot from the floor. The supposed observer’s angle 
of vision to the top is about thirty-eight degrees. This 
inclination may be said to translate into museum terms 
the very much greater angle at which the painter planned 
the picture should be seen from its position on an altar. 
Here the attic light alone gives no reflection on the can- 
vas. Even the thirty-four-foot top light covers the top 
of the picture with sheen, and the lower lights obliterate 
a good part of it. This result contravenes the often ex- 
pressed opinion that overhead lighting is essential for 
large pictures, such as Italian altar pieces, side lighting 
being suitable only for small pictures. The truth appears 
to be more nearly the contrary. Window lighting is in- 
dispensable for the largest, as well as best for the smallest 
and those of moderate size. The superior convenience 
of top light is shown only in the case of a residue of large 
but not the largest dimensions. 

The imperative necessity of window light for pictures 
reaching very high from the floor is emphasized in Dia- 
gram 7, representing the reflection from ceiling lights and 
window on the transverse wall, as seen from a position 
three quarters across the gallery, or about twenty-five 
feet from the wall. From this point the top of the upper 
canvas represented makes the normal angle of thirty de- 
grees with the horizontal. The picture is a Boar Hunt 
by Snyders, in the Louvre (7 feet 6 inches high by 11 feet 
6 inches wide; or 2.32 m. by 3.48 m.). The picture below 


186 MUSEUM IDEALS 


is Boucher’s Venus and Vulcan (6 feet 9 inches high by 
5 feet 6 inches wide; or 2.05 m. by 1.70 m.) also in the 
Louvre. All of the ceiling reflections enter the upper pic- 
ture, that from the thirty-four-foot light covering a mini- 
mal strip, and those from the twenty-eight and twenty- 


® 
© ef CB POPLADASESOOO 





DiacramM 7. TRANSVERSE WALL; FROM THREE QUARTERS 
AcRoss GALLERY 

four-foot lights masking the picture more or less com- 
pletely. Under the twenty-four-foot ceiling it would be 
impossible to see the picture free of glare even from the 
opposite wall. As before, the reflection from the window 
is wholly out of range of the canvas. In general, the com- 
parison indicates that on the transverse wall a picture 
in any part of the zone would be free of any reflection 
from the window when seen from an appropriate posi- 
tion, while all the upper half of the zone seen from appro- 
priate positions is exposed to reflections from some or all 
of the ceiling lights. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 187 


In the top-lighted galleries these same conditions are 
repeated on the remaining wall of the room, that in which 
the window of the attic-lighted room is placed. In this 
room no light falls directly on the window wall, and there 
would hence be no reflections at all on it from the window. 
All its illumination comes indirectly from the interior of 
the room, and especially from the opposite attic wall, 
which receives the light of widest angle from the window. 
In this particular, attic lighting differs radically and for 
the good from either top or side lighting. Under top 
light, the objects most strongly illuminated are the floor 
and the visitors upon it; under side light, the opposite 
exhibition wall and the objects and visitors it strikes on 
the way. With an attic window the light of widest angle 
is received where it can be put to the best use. The attic 
wall is not used for exhibition, and being above the visi- 
tor’s normal range of vision — that is, thirty degrees of 
altitude — in all practicable parts of the gallery, may be 
given the reflecting surface which will best diffuse light 
through the room. Attic lighting offers a favorable op- 
portunity for the use of indirect illumination from a re- 
flecting surface, whose present neglect after its success- 
ful employment by old Italian architects has been lately 
regretted by Mr. Hedley.! 

A window wall is commonly deemed wholly useless 
for exhibition purposes, and the resulting loss of exhibi- 
tion space is one of the chief objections made to lighting 
museum galleries by windows. It is to be admitted that 
the objection holds against side light, since in this case 
the wall and the window in it are within the range of 
vision together. But the simple experiment of screening 
the eyes from the window and the floor before it, as well 


1 C. Hedley, Report on Museum Administration in the United States, Australian 
Museum, Sydney, Miscellaneous Series, vol. vit (Sydney, 1913), p. 31. 


188 MUSEUM IDEALS 


as may be, with any object held in the hand, offers con- 
vincing proof that it is not wholly and may not be mainly 
the lack of sufficient illumination on a window wall that 
makes objects invisible on it, but the deadened condition 
of the sight produced by dazzling from the window. This 
deadened condition is forestalled in the attic-lighted room 
here proposed. The visitor would enter the room with 
his eyes protected from any glare from the light source, 
and thereafter would continue to be protected from it. 
Moreover, the window wall would be lighted up by dif- 
fusion from a surface above the ordinary range of vision 
— namely, the highly illuminated and light colored attic 
— as it never is in a side-lighted gallery. It is to be fairly 
expected that under these circumstances the “seeing” 
on the window wall would compare well with that in other 
parts of the room. Both observation and experiment in 
this direction are very greatly to be desired. ! 

The total result of the comparison for reflections of 
the sources of light on pictures or upright cases bears 
strongly in favor of attic light. Only the transverse walls 
of the attic-lighted room offer high objects complete ex- 
emption from such reflections. Its window wall and oppo- 
site wall afford all needed freedom of installation; exempt 
from glare in the one instance for objects of the prevail- 
ing height, and in the other at all heights for the ob- 
jects of minor importance of which every gallery has its 
share. Seas 

(2c) Thecomparison for reflections from brightly lighted 
objects within the gallery, including the visitor himself 
— or, as they may be called, mediate reflections — again 
favors attic light. The result in this case is decisive, owing 
to the difference just noted between the areas of maxi- 


1 Mr. Papworth remarks: ‘‘The reason that many galleries fail of success 
is that they are overlighted; and few persons comprehend this defect” (p. 74). 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 189 


mal illumination under the two systems. In looking at a 
museum object through glass a more or less visible image 
of a fragment of the scene before the glass overlies the 
object. The mass of light reflected from the glass and 
forming the image comes to the eye from that fragment 
of the room and its contents seen in the image; while the 
mass of light reflected from the object and revealing it 
comes to the eye in general from 
other parts as well. What can be 
seen on the glass over the object 
differs from what could be seen Danrnlanineticg 
through the glass from the object. TY aren Mees 
This appears in Diagram8. But = “Shewuge | ~~ 
since glass reflects a larger per- 
centage of light than objects do,! 
unless some part of the room vis- 
ible through the glass from the 
object is more intensely lighted than that fragment of it seen 
on the glass over the object, the image will tend to confuse 
the view of the object. Speaking broadly, the image must 
not include the most brilliantly lighted part of the room. 
This condition is fulfilled in the attic-lighted room and vio- 
lated in the top-lighted galleries. For the image in both 
alike will consist mainly of the lower walls of the room, 
with the floor and the objects on it, including the visitor 
himself. Under attic light this is less brilliantly lighted 
than the upper part of the room; under ceiling light more 
brilliantly lighted. Hence under attic light the image will 
tend to leave undisturbed the normal view of the object; 
under ceiling light to obscure it. The ceiling-lighted im- 
age will efface the object because more strongly lighted; 
the attic-lighted object will overpower the image, like- 
wise, because more strongly lighted. In the matter of 
1 Martin Mayer, Museumskunde, vol. v1 (1910), p. 162. . 









THE OBJECT 






Dracram 8 


190 MUSEUM IDEALS 


reflections from upright glass the argument stands as de- 
cisively in favor of attic light as it stood for reflections 
from the horizontal glass of desk cases.1 

(3) The evidence favors attic light again in the final 
point — that of glare coming from sun spots, or the spaces 
on floors and walls directly lit up by the sun. The tem- 
pering of direct. sun by semi-transparent curtains is a 
necessity of any system of museum lighting; but without 
unduly darkening the room its effect can only be reduced 
without being wholly obviated. This effect takes the form 
of an inequality of illumination between the sunlit and 
the shaded wall such that the visitor may be hindered in 
seeing either well. Objects under the influence of direct 
sun dazzle him on turning from those dimly lighted; and 
the dimly lighted are difficult to see on turning from the 


1 On drawing the necessary lines in one of the diagrams, it appears that from 
no standpoint will the image of the room seen at or beyond the customary dis- 
tance of three feet from glass seven feet six inches or eight feet in height show 
more than the lower fringe of the attic, or cove, below the normal altitude for 
the convenient inspection of objects, namely, thirty degrees; and for almost all 
standpoints no part of the attic will descend within that range; that is, the nor- 
mal image will be almost wholly confined to that part of the room in which the 
illumination is not maximal. 

The image of the room seen in very high reflecting surfaces will, under attic 
light, likewise include its most brilliantly lighted area — that is, the attic — and 
hence will become disturbing. But except on the opposite wall it will not include 
the source of light itself, as the image under ceiling light does on all four walls. 
Low side light alone excludes on high reflecting surfaces the image both of the 
source of light and of the area most brilliantly illuminated by it, namely, the 
opposite exhibition wall. But in turn, it brings either the source of light itself or 
its immediate reflection within the normal range of the visitor’s vision in half the 
positions he can assume. In short, top light, having its maxima in the ceiling and 
the floor, gives mediate reflections on low reflecting surfaces, and immediate 
reflections on high reflecting surfaces. Side light, having its maxima on two op- 
posite exhibition walls, gives neither on high surfaces, and immediate reflections 
on opposite low surfaces. Attic light, finally, having its maxima on two opposite 
walls above the exhibition range, gives neither on low surfaces and immediate 
reflections on opposite high surfaces. If the attic is made throughout a reflecting 
surface, as it should be, it adds mediate reflections on the remaining high sur- 
faces. Since glass is the protection to objects within reach commonly found 
necessary in museums, and high objects are generally non-reflecting, attic light 
alone gives the exemption most needed, taking the whole exhibition wall into 
consideration. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 191 


brighter. The decision of this final point between top 
and attic light must therefore turn on the question as to 
the amount of exposure of the exhibition walls of a gal- 
lery to sun spots under the two systems. The lighting 
which gives smaller wall spots for shorter periods will 
have the advantage. Diagrams 9 to 18 show as might be 
anticipated that the advantage remains with attic light.? 

As before, no account is taken of the effect of the struc- 
ture of the roof on the spots under top light, no uniformity 
of opinion existing as to the details of its best design. An 
opaque zenith is held a sine qua non of good top-lighting 
by most museum authorities at present, and would cut 
out a portion of the sun spots from top light, as it did of 


1 Professor Wagner remarks that the walls of a top-lighted gallery may be so 
unequally lighted that the pictures on the darker wall “are for the moment 
hardly discernible.” Durm’s Handbuch der Architektur, vol. tv, 6, 4, p. 238. 

2 The spots have been mapped out according to the following principles: 

The path of a ray of light across a room will follow a straight line having a 
certain point of entrance into it, a certain direction through it and a certain 
point of contact within it. 

Given the point of entrance and the direction, the point of contact may be 
found as follows: 

The three pairs of parallel faces of which a rectangular room is composed, 
being the ceiling, floor, and walls, the point of entrance of sunlight may lie in 
any face but the floor. Its position will be determined by its perpendicular dis- 
tance from any other two faces adjacent to this face and each other. The direc- 
tion of the ray will be given by the compass point through which the plane of 
its projection upon the floor passes, called its bearing; and its altitude, or the 
angle it forms with the floor in the plane of that projection. 

The projection of the ray upon the floor may be a point; in which case the 
point of entrance will be in the ceiling, the bearing of the ray will be indeter- 
minate, its altitude will be a right angle, and the point of contact will be a point 
having the same position on the floor as the point of entrance in the ceiling. 

Or, the projection of the ray upon the floor is a line; in which case the point 
of entrance may be in either the ceiling or the walls, and its bearing will be 
determined as the compass point of the plane of the projection, This plane will 
intersect one or both of the pairs of opposite walls. 

If the intersection is with both the pairs of walls, the bearing will be a diagonal 
of the room, and the point of contact may be found by projecting on one of 
either pair of walls the figure formed by drawing from the point of entrance, 
in the plane of the bearing, a line forming with the floor an angle equal to the 
altitude. 

In general, the intersection will be with one pair of walls only; in which case 
the point of contact will be found by projecting the same figure upon one of the 
other pair of walls. 


192 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the reflections from the ceiling opening. Again, those 
which are represented at the top of the walls in the dia- 
grams might be less in size or entirely shut out, as more of 
the roof near the eaves were of solid construction. 

The spots are represented as they would appear on the 
longest and the shortest days in the latitude of Boston; 
their approximate size and place at other times being de- 
ducible from these extremes. They are taken at 9 a.M., 
the usual opening hour of museums; at noon or other in- 
termediate hours, and at the winter closing hour — four 
o’clock — and the summer closing hour — five o'clock. 
The intermediate hours show the sweep of the spots. 

The galleries are represented seen from above, with the 
four walls laid out flat. All are supposed aligned with 
the cardinal points. As the ceiling light is square, and 
central in a square gallery, two diagrams, one for winter 
and one for summer, suffice for top light. The gallery 
shown is that with a ceiling light at twenty-eight feet, 
being a mean between the others. For the attic-lighted 
gallery, summer and winter diagrams are given with each 
direction of the window, north, south, east or west. 

The diagrams show that under the ceiling light the 
spots occur every clear day, and continuously while the 
sun is high enough. With the attic window to the north, 
they do not occur at all, excepting for a short time just 
before the closing hour in midsummer. With the window 
to the south, they occur all day in winter, and until about 
three o’clock in summer. With the window to the east, 
they occur from the opening hour until noon, both sum- 
mer and winter; and with the window to the west, from 
noon to the closing hour. 

Taking all the four exposures together, they would 
appear for about half as long a time in attic-lighted gal- 
leries as in galleries top-lighted. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 193 


In size, the spots from the ceiling light are in these dia- 
grams rather the larger; but if reduced by an He 
zenith they would be smaller. 

In position, the ceiling light spots in winter somewhat 
correspond to the window spots in summer, for the most 
part causing no inequality in lighting on the exhibition 





DiacraM 10 


Sun Spots FROM A SKYLIGHT 


194 MUSEUM IDEALS 


walls during these seasons respectively. The winter ceil- 
ing light spots are high on the exhibition walls or in the 
cove above, and the summer window spots either near 





Dracram 12 


Sun Spots rrom A Norra Attic WInDow 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 195 


the doorways or on the floor, excepting in the west attic- 
lighted room in the late afternoon. 

As spring comes on, the spots from the ceiling light de- 
scend upon the walls, causing more and more inequality 















Lae 























DiacraM 14 





Sun Spots FRoM A Souts Attic WINDOW 


196 MUSEUM IDEALS 


of lighting, until in midsummer the western wall is bathed 
in sunlight during the early morning hours, and the east- 
ern wall nearly all the afternoon. According to the dia- 





Di1acram 16 


Sun Spots rrom AN East Atrric WINDOW 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 197 


grams the inequality of lighting has now become greater 
than in the attic-lighted room at any time. As autumn 
advances, the process reverses itself. 







H 
i 


DEC. 21 aor WEST WINDOW 









Dracram 18 


Sun Spots rroM A West Attic WINDOW 


198 MUSEUM IDEALS 


In the north attic-lighted room the walls would at all 
times be equally lighted. A patch too small to be of any 
effect would appear over the doorway just at the end of 
the day in summer. ' 

In the southern and eastern attic-lighted rooms there 
would be some inequality of lighting in midwinter. But 
the spots are still for the most part in the attic or high 
on the walls, and as the season of stronger sun and clearer 
skies advances they begin to escape to the floor, the in- 
equality diminishing until it disappears in midsummer; 
the process reversing itself in the fall. The total exemp- 
tion of the north attic room from any disturbing inequal- 
ity of lighting is balanced in a measure, though not wholly, 
by the exposure of the western room, especially in the late 
afternoon in summer. Toward spring or autumn the in- 
equality would here become practically negligible. 

On the whole, taking duration and place both into 
consideration, and allowing for the smaller spots under 
an opaque zenith, the diagrams indicate that the attic- 
lighted rooms would suffer much less from inequality of 
lighting on the exhibition walls than the top-lighted gal- 
leries. Under the ceiling light, the sun spots would begin 
to invade exhibition space early in the spring and would 
remain there until late in the autumn, reaching their maxi- 
mum when the sun’s rays had most power. At this sea- 
son only one of the attic-lighted rooms, that directed 
west, would be subject to disturbing spots, and that one 
only at the end of the museum day. In none of the rooms 
do any other disturbing spots appear, except in winter, 
when they would be for the most part innocuous. The 
winter exposure of a western side light coming at the end 
of the day instead of in its noontide glare has even been 


claimed as an advantage by the Boston experimenters. ! 


* Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. 1v; The 
Experimental Gallery (Boston, 1906), p. 25. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 199 


In this final point, attic light again proves markedly 
superior for museum purposes. 

On all the five points here passed in review, embracing 
glare in all its varieties, the argument has gone one way. 
The psychological demand in the museum lighting prob- 
lem proves to be met by attic light with a success that 
top light does not begin to equal. 

On the architectural and practical side of the problem 
window lighting maintains a like superiority.1. Another 
side remains —the physical—relating to the second of 
the two factors in good lighting, namely, the proper 
illumination of the object. Here again attic lighting takes 
precedence. Professor Briicke stated the reason many 
years ago.? While high light, like that from an attic 
window, best brings out the details of objects, as Leo- 
nardo said, beneath light from the ceiling the observer 
sees mainly the shadowed sides of any projections on an 
object above his eyes, whether these are the unevennesses 
in a canvas, a stuff or a solid object. Apart from possible 
sheen, a veil of greater or less obscurity therefore tends 
to overspread it. The difference becomes manifest, as 
weavers know, when the dulness of tapestries under top 
light is compared with their brilliancy under light from 
a window. The remedy, which was suggested by Pro- 
fessor Briicke, assuming top light retained, consisted in 
building an elevated footway through the gallery, sup- 
ported on columns or otherwise, and reached by steps. 
From this footway the visitor would so overlook a large 
picture that the lighted and not the dark sides of its 
minute projections of pigment would be mainly visible. 

Corresponding to this radical solution of the physical 
problem of top-lighting —that of color —an equally 


1 These matters are discussed in the preceding essay. 
2 Ernest Briicke, Bruchstiicke aus der Theorie der bildenden Kiinste (Leip- 
zig, 1877), p. 171 f. 


200 MUSEUM IDEALS 


radical solution of the psychological problem — that of 
glare — had already been carried out at the New Pina- 
cothek at Munich in the Rottmann Gallery. Here the 
space assigned to the pictures was definitely divided off 
from the space assigned to the public by a row of columns 
supporting a solid roof, or velum, above which the light 
was admitted upon the picture wall, while the specta- 
tors remained in comparative darkness.! A variation of 
the same device was proposed, apparently independently, 
by the Messrs. Papworth, whose ideal gallery contained 
a central space with a roof chiefly solid and either hung 
or resting on columns, light reaching the pictures from 
above it.2 The plan is nearly equivalent to the joining 
of two small attic-lighted galleries face to face by an inter- 
mediate covered passage — a scheme which was adopted 
in the Royal Glass Palace at Munich, with results which 
Professor Tiede calls “‘extraordinarily favorable’’;* and 
in the Mappin Art Gallery at Sheffield, England (1886).4 
Mr. Seager has just proposed the method anew under 
the name of “‘top side light.” 

These two radical attempts to do justice to the two 
elements of the top-lighting problem may be called the 
only really important contributions to its solution which 
the century of the prevalence of top light in museums 


1 Mr. Wheelwright remarks of this gallery: “‘ Aside from the obstruction to 
view from the columns, the effect of this method of lighting is very undigni- 
fied.”” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. m1; 
The Museum Commission in Europe, p. 93. 

2 Papworth, p. 73, and Plates 9 and 10. 

3 A. Tiede, Museumsbaukunde (Berlin, 1898), p. 77. 

4 E. T. Hall, “Art Museums and Picture Galleries,” Journal of the Royal 
Institute of British Architects, vol. xtx (1911-12), p. 402. 

5 S. H. Seager, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. xx 
(1912-13), p. 51. Since the publication of the present essay in the Architec- 
tural Record, Mr. Edmund Anscombe, architect, writing from Dunedin, New — 
Zealand, sends me drawings of his successful design for the Sargeant Art Gal- 
lery at Wanganui, New Zealand, in which the principle of “top side light” 
is to be used for the picture galleries, according to the stipulation of Mr. Seager, 
who was Assessor of the plans. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 201 


has brought forth. All the discussions since on other 
points — on the relation of the dimensions of the ceiling 
opening to the height and area of a gallery, on the lines 
of equal illumination in the picture zone, on the form of 
the roof, the quality of the glass, the methods of shading 
the skylight and cleaning the ceiling light — appear in- 
effective studies of detail in comparison. Yet each of 
these two devices — footway and solid velum — is in its 
own way a reductio ad absurdum of the effort to light 
museum objects from the top. Professor Briicke’s sug- 
gestion of a footway seems to have met with no serious 
consideration in museums; and valuable as the plan of 
the solid velum proves in special instances, as a general 
solution of the difficulty of glare it seems equally inad- 
missible. The design of modern aquaria ! shows that the 
plan has its essential sphere in museum arrangements; 
and it has been used to the general satisfaction in collec- 
tions of natural history, and elsewhere, as at the North- 
ern Museum in Stockholm. Diagram 19 represents the 
principles employed in these various devices for the 
reservation of light.2 By all of them the visitor’s eyes 
are shielded from direct glare from the light openings. 
Nevertheless, for a large share of the contents of all mu- 
seums, whose adequate seeing demands the alternation 
of close with distant inspection, a screen reserving light 
for the objects alone may be set down as out of the ques- 
tion. If made a rule, the restriction of the visitor’s free- 


1 Brewer, p. 396. 

2M. Mayer, “‘Betrachtung eines Bautechnikers iiber die Einrichtung von 
Schausammlungen,” Museumskunde, vol. vi (1910), p. 165. 

G. von Koch, “Die Zoologischen Sammlungen des Landes-Museums in 
Darmstadt,” 3, Museumskunde, vol. v1 (1910), p. 92. 

Edmund M. Wheelwright, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications 
to the Trustees, vol. 11; The Museum Commission in Europe, p. 105 and Plate 76. 

Brewer, p. 389. 

Dr. F. A. Bather, “‘The Northern Museum, Stockholm,” Museumskunde, 
vol. rv (1903), p. 68. 


202 MUSEUM IDEALS 
ea 


ace 
aoe 











SOLID VELUM CENTRAL CORRIDOR OUTSIDE CORRIDOR 





LOW WINDOW 


E : EXHIBITS 


V3 VISITOR 
AQUARIUM 
METHODS OF RESERVING LIGHT FOR EXHIBITS, 
DIAGRAM 19 


dom of movement resulting from putting the public in- 
stead of the objects behind a barrier, as Herr von Koch 
has phrased it, would be intolerable.! 

The general problem of glare is not to be solved by 
attending to the augmentation or the reservation of light 
from an original source; but to its diffusion thereafter 
from all parts of the room not occupied by the objects 
and the public. Such a diffusion takes place under attic 
light, the whole area of maximal illumination above the 
cornice becoming its secondary source. This is evidenced 
by the success of clerestory lighting wherever employed; 
and in this use of balanced openings the principle of attic 
light promises also a solution of the problem of museum 
planning, as it will now be attempted to show. 


1G. von Koch, Ueber Naturgeschichtliche Sammlungen. (Darmstadt, 1892.) 
Also Museumskunde, vol. v1 (1910), p. 93. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM .GALLERIES 203 


THE NAVE PLAN VERSUS THE COURT PLAN 


Of the two novelties of construction embodied by Von 
Klenze in the Old Pinacothek in Munich in 1826, one — 
its top-lighting — the previous article has sought to prove 
a defect. The other — its corridor plan — the following 
pages will seek to prove a merit. As often happens, the 
defect was copied because it was easy to do so, and the 
merit dropped because it was difficult to do otherwise. 
In explaining his design, von Klenze stated his purpose 
to make it possible to reach the pictures of any school 
without passing through space devoted to those of any 
other. The unit of museum planning was not, according 
to this architect, an exhibition room, but an exhibition 
room with a passageway adjoining; the room in his plan 
being divided into two, one top-lighted as the chief gal- 
lery, and the other side-lighted for smaller pictures. This 
_ determination of the museum unit as a room plus a corri- 
dor recognized the basic nature of a structure devoted to 
permanent exhibition. A building through which people 
move to inspect any or all of certain classified contents 
demands freedom of direct communication between any 
two of its individual spaces. 

The expansion of museums and of their office during 
the century since the planning of the Old Pinacothek 
has emphasized this demand for freedom of access in 
complicating it. The accumulations have emphasized 
it in leading to the frequent rearrangement of rooms. 
Their wider use has emphasized it in admitting the par- 
ticular study of a single room by a class or audience under 
a leader or lecturer. Unless access to others can be had 
independently, the closing of a room for either purpose 
deprives visitors of the use of a whole suite. Again, their 
wider use has complicated the requirement of access in 


204 MUSEUM IDEALS 


assuming both in theory and practice a tripartite form. 
This was signified in 1870 for art museums in the words 
“Art, Education, Industry” on the seal of the Museum 
of Fine Arts in Boston, and was first formally stated for 
all museums in Dr. Bather’s Presidential Address in 1903 
as inspiration of the public as a whole, instruction of the 
interested, and investigation by the specialist.! Corre- 
sponding to this triple division, the unit of museum plan- 
ning has become an arrangement of three rooms with two 
intercommunicating corridors between. 

There is one plan for a museum building which may 
be called the standard, in that no other one plan has been 
so often adopted;? and by great good fortune its develop- 
ment in certain museums already expresses this triple 
unit. This plan provides exhibition space in two floors 
about two large areas open to the roof or the sky and sep- 
arated by a structure used for entrance. In many mu- 
seums the interior areas also are utilized for exhibition. 
In a number of museums, including one of the oldest 
buildings now used for museum purposes, the Naples 
Museum (1587), the external space consists of a double 
suite of rooms, inner and outer. Three museums lately 
built give the inner of the two secondary spaces the di- 
mensions and use of a corridor, opening into the ground 
floor spaces on either side. These are the Art Institute 
in Chicago (1893), the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow 
(1901), and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1909). 
This corridor variation of the standard plan, affording 
three kinds of space — the large interior areas and the 
upper and lower exterior rooms, with corridors between 
— offers a home for the modern triple unit. The corri- 


1 F. A. Bather, Address as President of the Museums Association, Museums | 
Journal (London), September, 1903, pp. 71 ff. 
? As already noted in the previous essay. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 205 


dors are intercommunicating and the rooms on either 
hand may be assigned to diverse purposes. 

In the three museums mentioned the two large interior 
areas are top lighted. Attic lighting, in its two forms — 
exterior, one-sided, or attic lighting proper, and interior, 
two-sided, or clerestory lighting — suggests a further 
development of this scheme which in preserving its solu- 
tion of the problem of access, satisfies, together with the 
demand for avoidance of glare, a third demand now widely 
current among all interested in museums: the demand, 
namely, for some means of making collections of over- 
whelming size available to the public as a whole. For 
the court, open or top lighted, may be substituted a nave, 
obtaining its light from clerestory windows above the 
outer rooms, and sharing it with the superposed corri- 
dors about it. This nave may be set apart for the public 
as a whole by devoting it to the exhibition of important 
objects and such as give a conspectus of the total con- 
tents of the museum. Being but a third of the total unit 
of the scheme, it may remain even in the largest museums 
no more extensive a space than can be visited on one 
occasion without confusion or fatigue. The lower floor 
of outer rooms may be given attic light and devoted to 
the exhibition of objects reserved for the study of inter- 
ested persons; and the upper floor given side light and 
used for department offices and work-rooms by the spe- 
cialists engaged at the museum and their guests. Doors 
into the corridor system serving both nave and outer 
rooms may give independent access to every space which 
is used independently of others throughout the whole 
museum. Such a scheme would realize the essentials of 
an ideal stated by Mr. Brewer: 


A natural history museum suggests itself where the public 
should be admitted to only a very small synoptic collection of 


206 MUSEUM IDEALS 


group cases in specially built and lighted alcoves, and adjacent 
to these in each department, first the collections for those spe- 
cially interested, beyond these again the reserve collections for 
the actual student.+ 


The scheme may be assumed a sound foundation for 
architectural development; since it follows the analogy 
of the cathedral, with its nave, aisles, chapels and tri- 
forium. Diagrams 20 to 25 represent in plan and sections 
a building embodying it. The professional reader will see, 
and the non-professional reader is asked to bear in mind, 
that these and following diagrams are not offered as de- 
signs, but as drawings showing one way in which certain 
requirements as to dimensions, arrangement, lighting and 
assignment of rooms might be observed in a museum de- 
sign. No more than this could be asked of a museum ofh- 
cial, and an architect has the right to demand no less of 
a professional client. 

It may be noted that the modules of this building are 
taken exactly or nearly from the series of numbers express- 
ing successive approximations to the proportion called 
by the Greek geometers the Golden Section; that is, the 
series 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ete., each after 
the first two being the sum of the two preceding. In a 
line divided by the Golden Section the shorter segment 
is to the longer as the longer is to the whole line. There 
is no question as to the esthetic value of the internal har- 
mony of this proportion in certain cases, although the 
claims of an all-embracing application made for it a gen- 
eration ago were doubtless excessive. 

Diagrams 20 and 21 show that the scheme is based upon 
the top-lighted gallery already studied, namely, a room 
thirty-four feet each way with a window at twenty-three 
feet from the floor. The space occupied by twelve of these 


1 Brewer, p. 389. 






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GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 207 


galleries is disposed about a corridor eight feet wide com- 
pletely enclosing a nave fifty-five feet wide, one hundred 
and forty-two feet long and ninety feet high to its flat 
ceiling. | 

The two diagrams (20 and 21) show in addition a fea- 
ture which is not embodied in the standard museum plan, 
but which again suggests a cathedral with its ring of out- 
lying chapels. A series of small and low rooms or cabinets 
thirteen feet wide and sixteen feet six inches long runs 
along each side of the building. Each of them is reached 
by a door from one of the main galleries, exception being 
made of the central double cabinet, here conceived as a 
vestibule with a doorway and flight of steps to the gar- 
den. These cabinets are lighted by windows with sills 
at domestic height — about three feet. They aim to 
afford conditions under which side light again becomes 
available for exhibition purposes; that is, when the visi- 
tor no longer walks about to see objects in different places, 
but seats himself with a window at his back or his side 
to see objects by its light. The principle of what may be 
called seated wnstallation, the arrangement of an object 
- to be inspected by persons sitting down, is illustrated 
in the room set apart in Amsterdam for Rembrandt’s 
Night Watch. A liberal application of the principle has 
just been advocated by the President of the Museum of 
Fine Arts, in Boston, Mr. Morris Gray.! In Diagrams 
20 and 21 this arrangement becomes an integral part of 
a museum plan. Its advantages are obvious. Objects 
so shown can be conveniently arranged for the closest 
study. The visitor can inspect them at his ease and lei- 


1 Annual Report, President of the Museum (1916), p. 19. “Usually, of course, 
they (visitors) must stand up and move about to see works of art; but where- 
ever they can sit down and thus get greater enjoyment, they should at least 
be given the opportunity. 

“Here and there in the different departments, therefore, museums would do 
well to exhibit works of art distinctly for the man who is seated. . . .” 


208 MUSEUM IDEALS 


sure. The physical rest prepares him to begin again to 
walk and stand about, as he must in order to see most of 
the exhibits. The contents of such cabinets might be 
changed from time to time, giving visitors the oppor- 
tunity of closely examining a variety of things under 
conditions at once pleasant, restful, quiet and good for 
seeing. In the cabinets as shown, the windows are cen- 
trally placed in order not to cast a glare in the eyes as 
one enters from the main gallery. 

The corridor between the main galleries and the nave 
is purposely kept at the lowest limit of width that will in- 
sure the free passage of numbers of people, in order to make 
impossible its use for exhibition. Above the main galleries 
a suite of side-lighted offices, thirteen feet in height, occu- 
pies the same space and is served by a second corridor over 
the first. The lower corridor has the height of the cornice 
of the galleries, twenty-one feet, leaving a space between 
the two corridors, eleven feet high, accessible from the 
upper corridor and represented in the diagram as used 
as a vault for storage. All these corridor spaces borrow 
light from the nave, the lowest through openings at thir- 
teen feet in the screen separating it from the nave, the 
intermediate by lunettes crowning the screen, and the 
highest by a series of triforium windows. The position of 
the intermediate corridor on a level with the attic of the 
galleries suggests that it might on occasion become a light 
chamber instead of storage space, giving minor auxiliary 
illumination on the window wall of certain of the suite 
of galleries. The lighting in these galleries would then be 
the unequally balanced high side light preserving its unity 
which Mr. Wheelwright admits as an alternative; in a 
measure also fulfilling Mr. Brewer’s ideal of the appli- 
cation of clerestory light to lower rooms. 


1 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. 1m, 
pp. 106, 108. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 209 


The nave is lighted from windows along the side walls 
with sills at sixty-seven feet from the floor. These win- 
dows would be out of the visitor’s range of vision, except 
from the corner of the eye or much foreshortened, in all 
standpoints in the gallery. If clear glass were used, the 

























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DiacraM 21 


light in the nave might be too intense for the best seeing. 
In any case curtains would be desirable to cut off direct 
sun. The screen with its cornice at eleven to thirteen 
feet from the floor would give a background rising much 
above the customary eight-foot case for smaller objects, 
somewhat above most sculpture, and even above most, 
if not all, of the cases needed for larger natural history 
specimens. 

Diagram 22 represents four bays of the nave with the 
screen in two of them carried to the level of the top of 
the upper cornice, twenty-four feet from the floor, in 
order to give a background for a very large canvas. The 
picture represented is one of the very largest, David’s 


210 MUSEUM IDEALS 


Crowning of the Emperor Napoleon I in the Louvre, 
twenty feet high by thirty wide. 

The arrangement of the entrance to the nave shown in 
the plan is represented in Diagram 21, and the arrange- 
ment of the exit in Diagram 23. The picture chosen here 
is another of the very largest 
canvases, Titian’s Assumption 
of the Virgin, at Venice, twenty- 
two feet high by twelve wide. 
There would be no glare on 
either picture seen from any 
position which would bring it 
all within the range of normal 
seeing. 

The nave is represented as 
partitioned into three sections, 
as if the largest were to be used 
for objects of science and the 
smaller two for works of art. The partitions are supposed 
to run either to the top of the screen, thirteen feet, or to © 
the top of the cornice above, twenty-four feet, according 
as lower or higher backgrounds or 
a more or less complete division is 
wished for. They might be made 
removable by keeping them on hand 
in sections, and using permanent 
sockets in the floor of the nave 
opposite the piers. A notion of the 
probable effect of exhibitions in 
these divisions of the nave may be 
gained from the use of similar partitions twelve feet high 
in the top-lighted central hall of the new National Mu- 
seum at Washington. Mr. Brewer writes that the galleries 
thus formed ‘‘afford excellent exhibition space for pic- 


BAA AG 
AG 


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LGA 


Z 


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Diacram 22 






(200 BAA BF 
00 O00 


D1acram 23 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES Q11 


tures, and the light from the high laylight (fifty-five 
feet from the floor) reflected and diffused by the white 
wall above is excellent.”’! Further, such screens tend 
to detach the mind of the spectator from the great space 
overhead; and upon the background they offer, the 
smallest objects — a collection of insects, of coins, of 
prints, of busts — would be at home in the largest naves. 
The largest division would suitably contain any objects 
but the very largest. For the exhibition of the skeleton of 
a whale or other gigantic animal, or for a large architec- 
tural cast, the whole nave would be none too large. Doors 
are supposed provided from the corridors to all divisions of 
the nave, as well as to all the parts into which the gallery 
space could conveniently be divided. These doors would 
permit cutting off direct access from one division of the 
nave to another, passage being around through the corri- 
dor; or connecting the exhibits in any division with gal- 
leries devoted to corresponding objects. 

In Diagram 20 the gallery space about the nave is 
shown with various divisions, as if to accommodate a 
miscellaneous collection. There are two large rooms, 
thirty-four by seventy feet, one lighted from the long side 
only, as if for pictures, the other from both the side and 
one end, as if for case objects. All of the right hand gal- 
lery space is in one large apartment one hundred and 
forty-two feet long, divided into.seventeen-foot bays by 
partitions reaching only to the cornice. The left hand 
space contains two standard galleries thirty-four feet 
square, separated by four cabinets, sixteen and a half by 
twenty-one feet. In these the ceiling is supposed brought 
down to the level of the cornice at twenty-one feet, and 
the window set at fourteen feet. The space behind marked 
*““Storage”’ in the plan is represented fitted with racks for 

1 Brewer, p. 392. 


212 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the accommodation of pictures or other objects in reserve. 
Comparing these cabinets with the two thirty-four-foot 
square galleries they replace, the wall space shows a loss 
of about ten per cent, while about fifteen per cent of the 
area of the rooms is secured for storage. 

It would appear entirely practicable, instead of block- 
ing up the six-and-a-half-foot openings on either side of 
the central window as shown in the left hand suite, to 
allow them to remain open, as shown in the right hand 
suite. If opaque curtains were then provided for the side- 
openings they could be kept drawn in ordinary weather, 
to be withdrawn in case of waning light or dark days, or 
removed in case of a use of the gallery demanding un- 
usual illumination. 

Alternative divisions of the space above the cabinets, 
made possible by the use of the intermediate corridor 
for access, are shown 
in Diagram 24. Of 
these, one represents 
the use of the attic 
space, eleven feet 
high, for additional 
studies or classrooms, 
the other to permit 
of additional galleries 
twenty-six feet high. 
It may be claimed as a merit of the present general scheme 
that its corridor system permits this elasticity in the 
choice of floor levels in the whole structure about the 






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D1aGRAM 24 






nave. 

A fourth possible division and use of space in elevation 
and plan in this structure is shown in Diagram 25. The 
end in view is the reservation of light for exhibits, whose 
success in many instances has already insured it a per- 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 213 


manent place among museum methods. The gallery of 
the upper tier, which is shown as an alternative in Dia- 
gram 24 and is reached by the intermediate corridor, is 
here reduced to the width of that on the ground floor, 
twenty-one feet, and is represented as used either for 
cases or for exhibits occupying a space of about fourteen 
by sixteen feet and seen from behind a glass partition 
dividing off a passageway from door to door. The ar- 
rangement nearly reproduces the plan of an outside cor- 
ridor used for the Zodlogical Collection of the Darmstadt 
Museum and shown in Diagram 19. The adjoining space 
is divided horizontally into two suites of smaller spaces 
‘for exhibits to be looked at from the corridor through a 
partition. Their size, twelve by sixteen feet in the inter- 
mediate corridor, and ten by twelve feet in the upper, is 
somewhat greater than that of the Bird Habitat groups 
in the American Museum of Natural History in New 
York, whose installation as reported by Mr. Brewer is 
given in Diagram 19 as an arrangement for a low window; 
and their method of lighting is like that of the Aquarium 
at Detroit, Michigan, mentioned with special approval 
by this critic. Mr. Brewer notes! that the Aquarium at 
Detroit, a city of half a million inhabitants, has a million 
visitors a year, although three miles from the city proper. 
“These figures should give museum directors seriously to 
think; and they should ask themselves, especially those 
in charge of natural history collections, whether methods 
of display and lighting more akin to those employed in 
aquaria — for instance the alcove group system with over- 
head lighting — might not add enormously to the popular- 
ity of their collections.” It would appear that such series 
of room exhibits might include many other kinds of ob- 
jects than those of natural history: historical remains, 
1 Page 396. 


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DiacramM 25 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 215 


fragments of interiors, or ethnological specimens. Accord- 
ing to the present scheme these two corridor suites would 
be lighted from a continuous skylight just outside the 
parapet of the ambulatory on the roof, through two series 
of wells. The wells lighting the upper suite are about 
eight by ten feet and six feet deep; those lighting the 
lower suite about six by ten feet and twenty feet deep. 
Each of these latter passes between two of the upper suite 
of cabinets and lights two of the lower and larger. 

As the attic lighting of the chief galleries in the present 
scheme practically reproduces the lighting of the alcoves 
in the central corridor form of the reservation of light — 
shown in Diagram 19 and lately advocated as “top side”’ 
light by Mr. Seager — and as the device of the solid velum 
used in the Rottman Gallery has not since found approval 
or imitation, there remains but one desirable form of the 
six shown in the diagram which has not yet been taken 
advantage of here. This is the method 
of reserving light for exhibits under a 
high window employed in the Stockholm 
Museum, and described by Dr. Bather.! 
Diagram 26 shows an application which 
might be made of this method in the 
chief galleries of the present scheme. The 
window wall of the gallery below the cor- 
nice is occupied by a construction like a 
high case — or, if open, a niche. The in- 
clined back of the upper framework serves 
as a reflecting surface to shield the visitor from light coming 
from an opening below the cornice, and direct it through 
a diffusing medium upon the exhibits hung or set below. 
The window wall up to eleven feet or above could in this 
way be specially lighted without any direct glare reach- 

1 F, A. Bather, Museumskunde, vol. 1v (1908), pp. 66 f. 





D1iAGRAM 26 ° 


216 - MUSEUM IDEALS 


ing the visitor’s eyes. It must be admitted that illumina- 
tion from an unseen source directly above the object in- 
spected is top light in a pronounced form. While in 
special instances it might be justified, a certain unearth- 
liness of aspect would appear inseparable from it, and 
its availability for museum objects in general may be 
doubted. In the attic-lighted galleries of the present 
scheme the need of such a device might never be felt. 
The large and bright reflecting surface above the oppo- 
site cornice would insure a considerable illumination on 
the window wall, and the eyes of the visitor would retain 
a degree of sensibility at present unknown in museums. 
The entrance section of the building shown in Diagram 
20 is conceived as a large mass fronting the rest of the 
structure after the manner of the towers and their con- 
nection in a cathedral. It is supposed constructed in four 
floors, from twenty-two feet downward in height, to con- 
tain all the various minor facilities now offered by large 
museums. The entrance hall is flanked by a cloak-room 
and an office for the sale of catalogues and photographs, 
and gives access by stairways downward to the public 
lavatories, and upward by stairways and an elevator to 
the offices and library immediately above, the lecture 
hall above this, and the restaurant and kitchen on the 
top floor. The indicated size of these main rooms, forty- 
four by fifty-five feet, gives an ample reading-room and 
restaurant, and a lecture hall seating perhaps three hun- 
dred people, and capable of extension. All the upper 
rooms being central in the front of the building may be 
given unobstructed light from along one side. The serv- 
ice stairway and the freight elevator provided for at- 
tendants and supplies in the transverse corridor at the 
rear of the building would be accessible from these rooms 
through the upper corridors on either side of the nave. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 217 


The entrance hall would be lighted both from the nave 
over the screen and from or over the vestibule in front. 
It is large enough to be the general meeting place of visi- 
tors, and for that purpose its central section is provided 
with seats about the columns and against the adjacent 
walls. The cloak-room has a window directly opposite 
the entrance turnstile, and a long counter opening on the 
transverse passage, where, on crowded occasions, a num- 
ber of persons could stand out of the way of passers and 
get their wraps from several attendants. A telephone 
booth adjoins. The publication office is in the correspond- 
ing position, where intending purchasers could inspect 
photographs undisturbed and under ample light from a 
high side window. As all of these utilities, including the 
elevator, are placed in the transverse passages, the en- 
trance hall itself could be designed and used as a digni- 
fied hall of reception, containing nothing to distract the 
visitor from the essential purpose of his visit. 

An excess provision is made in this entrance section 
for the various subsidiary needs of a museum, in antici- 
pation of the inevitable expansion toward which every 
museum must look. A museum by its nature as an accu- 
mulation of objects worth keeping in sight is liable to 
grow as other buildings are not, and in its design should 
be accommodated to this fact. A theatre has a limit of 
size, even a railway station may be adjusted to all rea- 
sonable expectation of traffic, but there is no limit to the 
desire of a community to possess in its museum an epit- 
ome of the surrounding world of nature and man. In 
strictness, no plan for a museum building which contem- 
plates its eventual completion is an adequate plan. ‘The 
design must always be such as will not be marred by addi- 
tions. Two alternatives are possible. 

The choice of a plan for a building to be indefinitely 


218 MUSEUM IDEALS 


extended lies between a single conglomerate structure and 
a number of buildings connected by corridors — a pile 
or a group; and two considerations in the present case 
point to the choice of a group. 

If growth were to take the form of an extension of the 
building shown in Diagram 20, its nave must either be 
prolonged, or extended by transepts or wings. Prolonga- 
tion could not be indefinitely continued both for artistic 
and practical reasons. The Museum of Natural History 
in Paris is probably alone among museums in the great 
length — 1725 feet — anticipated for its series of narrow 
halls on the Rue Buffon. Even the long wing of the 
Louvre is already voted a weariness to the traveller. 
Transepts or wings would violate the fundamental ex- 
ternal requirement of good museum lighting, that there 
should be no rooms lighted by windows at internal angles 
between high walls. It may be stated as a canon of the 
external conditions of light for a museum that only a 
minimum of light in the exhibition rooms may be per- 
mitted to come by reflection from facades and roofs as a 
half of it does in an internal angle. The ideal is that it 
should be impossible from any space devoted to exhibi- 
tion to see through the light opening anything but the 
sky. As museums are now constructed, even top light 
has not the advantage in this respect that might be anti- 
cipated, towers and higher rising walls often cutting off 
large sections of the sky from the gallery below; while 
side-lighted rooms are placed without hesitation in the 
angles of wings, behind pillars, or on courts whose oppo- 
site walls may block off the sky almost completely. Yet 
the light reflected from fagades and from roofs is deficient. 
for museum purposes both in quantity and quality. These 
surfaces reflect but a fraction of the light coming from 
the sky, they are generally colored and their weathering 
is never within control. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 219 


There remains the alternative of a group. The museum 
accommodations shown in Diagram 20 may be indefinitely 
expanded by adding other buildings at a distance to be 
determined by the canon of good external lighting, and 
connecting them with each other by low corridors. Such 
a group is the inevitable outcome if a museum is to be 
planned for indefinite expansion according to its essential 
need of white light. 

The possible connection of other buildings with that 
shown in Diagram 20 is suggested by the open 
ends of the transverse passage through the en- 
trance hall and that leading out from the nave. 
The structure, in itself of very modest dimensions 
as museums go, may become the parent building 
of a museum group of any size. In the outline Diucram 
plan of Diagram 27 it is represented as Stage I a 
of such a development. Diagram 28 shows an immedi- 
ate descendant, here supposed connected with its pro- 
genitor by a prolongation of the transverse passage as an 
outside corridor one hundred and fifty feet long.! This 
connecting corridor, being designed for daily public use 
and not as an auxiliary passage for exceptional occasions 
and special classes of persons, is planned thirteen feet 
wide. In the Museum of Natural History at Paris, struc- 
tures on either side the main building are connected with 
it by corridors fifty feet long and ten feet wide. The pres- 
ent corridor is conceived as a low cloister about thirteen 
feet high with a still lower service passage over it con- 
nected with the upper system of the parent building. 

Except for the entrance section, the pavilion repro- 
duces in little all the features of the parent building. It 





1 To guard against risk from fire, Mr. Weissman thinks that a space of 140 
feet should separate a museum on all sides from neighboring houses. “Gallery 
Building,” Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. xtv (1907), 
p. 417. 


220 MUSEUM IDEALS 


has its central public space, like the crossing and lantern 
of a cathedral, its suite of environing galleries, its public 
and service stairways, its department rooms or galleries 


344 47 


55°: 90h. 





Dr1acGRaM 28 


above, its passenger and freight lifts, and its corridor sys- 
tem. The result of its erection would be the group of 
buildings shown in the outline plan of Diagram 29 as 
Stage II of a progressive development from the incon- 
spicuous beginning shown in Diagram 
20. A sound architectural result might 
ZY) Yy be expected, since the two compo- 
“Y nents of the group would illustrate 
Z@ the same general type of design on 
the same modules, and yet with suffi- 
cient variety of application to escape monotony. 
On account of this general similarity — only the gal- 
leries on either side the entrance corridor and those oppo- 






D1acraM 29 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 921 


site contributing a new unit of size — the pavilion may 
grow by expansion toward and beyond the likeness of the 
parent building. Its lantern may add to itself two trans- 
verse naves in opposite directions, about which the corri- 
dors and galleries may likewise grow. It is to be assumed 
that appropriate provision in the foundation and walls 
involved would make such extension an easy matter, and 
something to be undertaken little by little, as the needs 
of the collections demanded. 

In further stages of growth, other pavilions, reached 
by the other two corridors left open in Diagram 20, might 
be added, and expanded in their turn. In Diagram 30 
the scheme is represented at a point when its size would 
approach that of the largest museums of any kind either 
existing or planned —the megalo-museum as now built 
or dreamed. 

The space occupied by the buildings and grounds shown 
in Diagram 30 within the corners indicated is a square 
of eight hundred feet, or sixteen acres, of which about 
seven and a half acres are covered by construction. In this 
proportion the scheme differs greatly from the largest 
modern museums. In all cases these cover more and some- 
times all of the ground area they occupy. In the area of 
the buildings the scheme is still below the largest; but its 
indefinite extension on the same plan is possible, and as 
the diagram shows, in five ways. The completed plan of 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York calls for a 
building nine hundred and fifty by five hundred and fifty 
feet, covering thirteen acres with a comparatively small 
deduction for courts, already in part covered by construc- 
tion. The British Museum as built and the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York as planned, 
each cover eight acres with their buildings, the courts of 
the American Museum adding four and a half acres to 


229 MUSEUM IDEALS 


its proposed total extent. The new Field Museum of 
Natural History in Chicago covers six acres, and the 
Museum of Natural History in London four and a half 
acres, the buildings in each case extending over the entire 
area occupied. The building of the Brooklyn Institute 
of Arts and Sciences will occupy with its courts as planned 
an area of eight acres and cover five and a half acres 
with construction. The National Museum at Washington 
covers four acres, or with its courts, five. 

A comparison of floor space yields other results on ac- 
count of the different number of floors in the building. 
In the National Museum at Washington the floor space 
devoted to exhibition is about 220,000 square feet, or 
five and a half acres, and that devoted to department 
offices and storage about four acres, the total floor space 
in four floors being nearly twelve acres. The adminis- 
tration of the museum is reported by Mr. Brewer as 
thinking the exhibition space large enough for any mu- 
seum, but the department space too small for their pur- 
poses. According to this judgment a megalo-museum of 
the present should not devote more than about five acres 
to exhibition space, but might to advantage assign at 
least an equal area to department purposes. —The museum 
of Diagram 30 meets both requirements; but by reserv- 
ing the first floor galleries for those who especially wish 
to enter, gives but two of its five acres of exhibition 
space to the public as a whole.! The reduction may be 
regarded as a wholesome readaptation of the amount of 
things shown to the powers of those who are to see them. 
A walk through five acres of floor space passing within 


1 The total floor area of the buildings represented in Diagram 30 is about 
600,000 feet, or fifteen acres. The basement would cover 215,000 feet, the en- 
trance block in its four floors 30,000, the naves 80,000, the first floor galleries 
135,000, and the second floor also 135,000. The department space partly in the 
basement and partly on the second floor would easily reach and pass the limit 
of five acres. 





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GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 223 


fifteen feet of all the exhibits might be expected to extend 
to about three miles. Through the naves and cloisters 
of the present scheme it would reduce to about one mile. 
A pressing need of a better adjustment of means to ends 
in the matter of public exhibition would be met by such 
a limitation of primary exhibition space. 

Conceived as a group in elevation, the scheme would 
offer opportunities for three lantern towers disposed sym- 
metrically about the parent building, whose cathedral 
front would distinguish it in appearance from the rest. 
The high naves would announce the paramount interest 
of the museum in the community generally. The use 
of high naves meets the architectural objection Mr. Weiss- 
man expresses to top-lighted museums. “Buildings like 
these being rather low, the exterior is not very satisfac- 
tory.” ! The three connecting cloisters are each given open- 
ings at the centre into two extensive gardens among the 
wings. The main entrance would be approached through 
a wide forecourt, and a business entrance would have a 
driveway of its own at the side. 

A park is the natural setting for a large museum, since 
a park is the pleasure ground of a city and every large 
museum is principally a holiday house, having no claim 
on the people generally except in their hours of leisure. 
A park, too, best offers the quiet and exemption from 
dust and risk of fire which every museum needs; and a 
park alone gives it freedom to expand into a group of 
structures sufficiently open to insure the predominance 
of light from the sky in the galleries. 

In the naves of the present scheme with its liberal gar- 
dens and forecourt, the ideal of pure skylight would be 
everywhere fulfilled except in a few windows of the par- 
ent building, through which it would be possible to see 

1 Weissman, p. 417. 


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GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 225 


from the floor a part of the rear wall of the entrance 
structure. 

In the galleries fronting outward there would be no 
obstruction from other buildings of the group. The con- 
ditions in the inward-fronting galleries are represented 
in Diagrams 31 and 32. The narrow cross-hatching indi- 
cates the area in which all the light received in a plane 
perpendicular to the wall of the room is reflected from 
the walls and roof of the opposite wing; the space left 
blank indicates the area receiving light from the sky only; 
and the wider cross-hatching indicates the area receiving 
part of its light from the sky and part by reflection, the 
proportion of skylight increasing as the blank space is 
approached. The sections are drawn through the tunnel 
for service connecting the ends of the largest wing with 
the two next in size, because at this point the buildings 
are nearest together and the conditions are most unfa- 
vorable. They put the matter unfavorably, also, in that 
the amount of obstruction represented obtains through 
only a part of the horizontal angle over which light enters 
the gallery windows. But even the obstruction as shown 
is negligible. The diagrams indicate that all parts of both 
opposite and transverse walls receive light only from the 
sky up to ten feet in the thirty-four-foot galleries, to eight 
feet in the twenty-six-foot second floor galleries, and up 
to five feet in the twenty-one-foot first floor galleries; and 
that all other parts of the exhibition zone get some sky- 
light and most parts a preponderance. There would also 
be some slight interference with light from the sky, due 
to the connecting cloisters, on one of the walls of the 
adjacent twenty-nine-foot square galleries in each wing. 

It is hardly too much to claim that in a building such 
as this, while the light would be ample in quantity and 
practically ideal in quality, the problem of glare would 


226 MUSEUM IDEALS 


be completely solved. From the time the visitor enters 
the museum until he leaves it, he is never brought face 
to face with any source of light. Lf he keeps to the public 
space he will never see one in a way to notice it; and while, 
in the galleries, at one doorway at each corner of each 
wing he sees a window at an angle before him, it would 
be almost wholly above the range of his normal vision. 
It is to be particularly remarked that he enters the gal- 
leries through a corridor but dimly lighted by a window 
he cannot see. In the City Museum of Amsterdam, where 
the stairway is lighted from above through yellowish glass, 
the architect thought a similar provision necessary. Mr. 
Weissman writes: “As it would not be well to enter the 
gallery rooms at once from this warm light, compara- 
tively dark rooms were arranged through which the visi- 
tors have to pass before entering.” ! 

In the museum of Diagram 30 a degree of visual sensi- 
bility might be confidently awaited that would render 
its main lighting problem one of exclusion and not of 
admission, and which would notably lessen the fatigue 
of a visit. 

The question of artificial lighting has not been touched 
upon for two reasons. First, a museum is a daylight in- 
stitution. Any works of fine art it may contain were 
made in daylight dnd meant to be looked at in daylight; 
and none of its contents have an appeal that can com- 
pete with the more restful or more stirring enjoyments 
or means of improvement to which our evenings are 
given. Museum objects demand to be seen in hours of 
complete relaxation, and not in hours needed for recoy- 
ery from the cares and excitements of full days. At pres- 
ent Saturday afternoons and Sundays are the only times 
during which people in general can be expected to visit 

1 Weissman, p. 443. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 227 


museums, and only if further reductions are made in 
hours of work can they be led to spend more of their time 
there to good purpose. Again, a striking fact has been 
established by Professor Ferree’s recent inquiries. Arti- 
ficial lighting proves a source of eye-strain hitherto un- 
suspected. His experiments show that while after several 
hours of work under daylight the capacity of the eye re- 
mains practically what it was at first, the same period 
of work under artificial light is marked by a steady and 
rapid decline in visual powers.! Artificial illumination of 
museum exhibits adds a new and all-important kind of 
weariness to what is already one of the most exhausting 
of occupations. 

The search for the best internal conditions of light in 
museums led to the substitution of naves for courts in 
the buildings of which the scheme of Diagram 30 is com- 
posed; and the search for the best external conditions 
determined it as a group instead of a conglomerate. There 
is another consideration of great importance which would 
of itself suffice to incline the choice toward the radial 
plan of buildings with cloister connections instead of the 
cellular plan of a building with interior courts. A museum 
building needs to be comprehensible as a whole to its 
visitors. They must know where they are at any time, 
what remains before them and whither to turn to reach 
it. The need is felt by every one in a museum with which 
he is not familiar. It is felt by the majority of people in 
the museum of their own town, and by all without ex- 
ception in the museums of other places. Every one in 
most museums and most people in every museum want 
to be able to see all its departments and all its chief 
treasures in one visit of an hour or a few hours. In order 


1 C. E. Ferree, “Tests for the Efficiency of the Eye,” Transactions of the 
Illuminating Engineering Society, vol. vt, no. 1 (January, 1913), pp. 51 and 52. 


228 MUSEUM IDEALS 


that they should be able to do this without bewilderment, 
difficulty and waste of time, there should be an easily 
comprehensible circuit through the whole space devoted 
to the public. Such a circuit is possible and easy in a 
museum on the radial plan here adopted, and difficult 
or impossible in a museum on the usual cellular plan. 
One simple rule without any map or plan would guide 
the visitor through the whole public space of the scheme 
of Diagram 30 or its further developments, and carry him 
back to his starting-point without bringing him twice 
before the same exhibits — “ Keep to the right when you 
can.” The broken line shows whither this rule would lead 
. him on starting from the entrance. Keeping it in mind, 
there is no alternative presented at any point; no oppor- 
tunity to say, ““Have we seen this before?” or “Which 
shall we take first?” If there is any turn to the right 
before him he has not seen the collection to which it leads, 
and there is no need of deciding what to see, for all will 
be seen in course by following the rule. With a cellular 
plan, it may be impossible to see all the galleries without 
seeing some twice; and when possible, none but a com- 
plicated set of directions will enable the visitor to do it. 

This appears from the consideration that from any 
junction of three wings at right angles, of which there are 
two on opposite sides of the building in a museum about 
two courts, four in a museum about four, and so on for 
more complex schemes, there are three paths which sooner 
or later must be traversed if all the exhibits are to be 
inspected. A single line representing the visitor’s path 
has but two ends; and one of these ends must lie at each 
of the triple points, the line being continuous at that 
point in the other two possible directions. Hence, start- 
ing at the entrance as one triple point, a single journey 
through a museum about two courts will end at the 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 229 


opposite triple point, and to reach the entrance he must 
traverse the central wing again, as shown in Diagram 33. 
It is true that he might then ascend the stairs and visit the 
next floor in the 


contrary sense; so 
that if the exhi- 
bition space con- 
sisted of an even 
number of floors 
the visitor might 
return finally to 
the entrance by the elevator or stairway without seeing 
the same exhibits twice. It is also true that a double 
journey up one side and down the other in each wing 
is possible without passing the same side twice, but 
the process proves complicated. The visitor may, for 





Sesh fy aR Pe eke | 





Diacram 33 


example in a building with four courts, make twice the 
circuit of the outer wings of the building as shown in 
Diagram 33, and then, proceeding up the central wing 
to its crossing with others, from this point out go up 
and back through each of these, taking his way back to 
the entrance as his second trip through the central wing. 
But beside exalting the purpose to get through the mu- 
seum over the purpose to see its contents as far as may 
be in connected fashion, this rule presupposes a capacity 
of orientation and a memory for locality which would be 
sorely tested at each of the four points where alternative 
ways opened, and of which the public in general is far from 
capable. As a popular circuit, the journey would probably 
be prolific of repeated visits to the same exhibits and the 
missing of many; while the rule given for the museum of 
Diagram 30 would lead to no such annoyance because of 
its simple content and orderly result. At the entrance 
there would be the choice which of the three ways open 


230 MUSEUM IDEALS 


to follow first. Diagram 30 supposes the right hand wing 
chosen, but the choice of the parent building would give 
the same result. The visitor would enter the nave, since 
the right hand passage, leading to the galleries, would not 
be open. Passing through the nave and into the corridor 
beyond, he must turn to the left because the right hand 
door to the corridor is also closed; and taking the first 
turn to the right, would find himself in the cloister lead- 
ing to the long wing. Traversing this wing, first on one 
side and then the other, by the same rule, he would even- 
tually find himself again in the cloister, and after making 
a short necessary turn to the left, again in the nave of 
the parent building and back at the entrance. Here a way 
to the right again opens, leading to one of the smaller wings 
through both of which the same rule would lead him even- 
tually again to the entrance, having exhausted his three 
choices. Meanwhile, at any point the specially interested 
visitor could, by asking an attendant, learn the way to such 
of the related galleriesas he might wish to see; and could 
inspect their contents undisturbed by the main throng of 
visitors. ‘This exemption would be especially welcome in 
museums of art. Professor Paul Clemen writes: “Our 
modern exhibition buildings have shown that the rooms 
which do not lie directly in the way of the throng have 
the happiest and most intimate effect and are best adapted 
for the quiet and contemplative enjoyment of art.” ! In 
the present circuit one only of the naves, that of the parent 
building, would have been seen in two visits separated 
by an interval. In default of special measures to the con- 
trary, the collections shown here would doubtless always 
retain something of their original miscellaneous charac- 
ter as the nucleus of all the collections. The others, each 
supposedly devoted to one main department of the mu- 
1 Paul Clemen, Zeitschrift fur Bildende Kunst (1905), p. 40. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 231 


seum, would have been seen continuously. These continu- 
ous visits would be spaced each from the other by prom- 
enades through the cloisters. The public circuit of the 
'museum of Diagram 30, short as it is, would not consist 
of an unbroken round of inspection of fresh objects, as 
in almost all existing museums, but of a series of separate 
visits to more or less related objects with short walks 
between. While the contents of the museum would every- 
where be presented to the visitor in rooms giving no view 
of anything else, there would be recurrent opportunities 
and time for a return to the outside world, and in fine 
weather for a descent into the gardens. These cloister 
promenades would at once rest his eyes, vary the call on 
his muscles, and give him opportunity to turn his mind 
away from what had gone toward what was coming. 

In another way the fatigue of a visit to the museum of 
Diagram 30 would be less than in most other museums. 
The whole public space and most, if not all, of the reserved 
exhibits could be seen without climbing any stairs. A 
staircase in a museum confronts the visitor with a phys- 
ical task of a kind he may wish to avoid and which in 
consideration of the mental tasks before him, he may 
well be spared if it can so be arranged. 

The structure of the scheme lends itself to the division 
of the collections into seven departments under three 
heads. It is tempting to fill out such a division in accord- 
ance with the possibilities of gathering tangible objects 
worth keeping. In the general museum the three wings 
may represent man, other forms of life and the planet we 
inhabit; or Anthropology, Biology, and Geology, as they 
do in the National Museum at Washington. In an art 


1“... Every one I believe greeted with joy the idea of a museum where 
weary mounting of stairs was to be wholly, or to a large extent, eliminated.” 
R. Clipston Sturgis, Report on Plans Presented to the Building Committee of the 
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, 1905), p. 11. 


232 MUSEUM IDEALS 


museum, they may represent the graphic arts, the ancient 
art of the Mediterranean, and modern art of East and 
West, as they do at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 
But a museum is born, not made; its collections mainly 
grow, not by taking thought, but by the grace of Heaven; 
and any large plan for its development is foredoomed to 
disappointment. 

At first, 1t may be assumed, any collections the parent 
building was erected to contain would be insufficient 
to fill it, and some of the space could, pending their 
growth, be lent to 
other enterprises, 
classes, clubs, or 
other organizations 
for public welfare. 
This is the situation 
represented by the 
blank spaces in out- 
line plan I of Dia- 
gram 27, where the 
public, and most of 
the gallery space, is 
indicated as_ filled. 
Outline plan II of 
Diagram 29 repre- 
sents the addition 
of a pavilion to ac- 
commodate one of 
the departments grown beyond the available space in 
the parent building. Its transfer vacates space in both the 
nave and the galleries of the parent building, and im 
the pavilion there is space which it must grow to fill. 
Outline plan III of Diagram 34 represents the transplant- 
ing of another department into a second pavilion, and 





DracramM 35 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 233 


the enlargement of the first to accommodate the rapid 
growth of the department first moved. At this point in 
the supposed growth of the museum, a large endowment, 
a government grant, extraordinary success in some ex- 
pedition, or other unforeseeable event, suddenly reduces 
the symmetric plan of Diagram 30 to an impossibility. 
The department first moved now turns out to be the main 
museum. Long discussions ensue, and the architects are 
called upon to devise a substitute. Nevertheless, the 
principle adopted proves equal to the emergency, as ap- 
pears in outline plan IV of Diagram 35. The first pavilion 
expands into a great double wing, like that planned to be 
entered from the end of the parent building. Other pavil- 
ions follow in due course, Jeaving the group still a har- 
monious architectural mass, if an unsymmetrical one, with 
further unlimited possibilities of extension. Such a com- 
bination of naves, corridors, and galleries in a way to 
meet unexpected forms of museum growth, may be lik- 
ened to the farmstead type of Lombardy, capable of end- 
less new forms of shelter for a family, its stock, its tools, 
and its harvests, each a satisfactory composition; or to 
a tree like the pine, from which almost any branch 
may be cut without destroying its picturesque complete- 


ness.! 


1 The nave plan in all its stages illustrates in detail the requirements of 
museum design thus stated by Mr. Clipston Sturgis: ‘‘ The ideal for the arrange- 
ment of each department taken in connection with the previous ideals of a 
single main floor and independent departments would be (1) that each should 
have its entrance on a main artery of the group; (2) that the visitor should be 
given a short circuit of the most important galleries, in which everything shown 
should be good of its kind, should be given plenty of space, and exhibited under 
the very best circumstances of light and surroundings; (3) that the route should 
be made perfectly clear . . . giving the visitor the opportunity to go on to the 
other rooms of the department, or if he prefers, leave the department where he 
entered it on the main artery.... (4) that a longer, but equally clear circuit 
should embrace the reserve galleries which should be readily accessible for all 
who desire, and yet in a measure withdrawn; (5) and that finally, there should 
be the last group, clear of either circuit, through which there is no thorough- 
fare, for the work and study of the department.’’ Museum of Fine Arts, Bos- 


234 MUSEUM IDEALS 


The scheme of Diagram 30 is an invention only in 
the Patent Office sense of a possible “improvement in 
the art.”” It may be regarded as a step in a development 
of which the Naples Museum (1587), the Old Pinacothek 
in Munich (1826), the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow 
(1901), and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1909), 
offer successive illustrations. The museum at Naples 
laid the foundation in its double row of rooms around large 
spaces on either side a block devoted to access. The Old 
Pinacothek settled the unit of plan for museums as an 
exhibition space plus a corridor adjoining. The Kelvin- 
grove Museum adopted the principle of lighting a large 
interior space from a clerestory. The Boston Museum 
chose a radial lay-out about garden courts. These steps 
have been summed by reducing one of the two exterior 
spaces of the Naples Museum to a corridor, as in the Pina- 
cothek, and devoting the interior space to primary exhi- 
bition, while doubling the secondary space in accordance 
with the modern tripartite division of museum functions: 
further, by extending the clerestory light of the Kelvin- 
grove Museum to all the exhibition space, the large in- 
terior courts becoming naves, and the galleries about 
receiving attic windows; finally, by carrying on the radial 
principle, since illustrated also in the University Museum 
at Philadelphia, the connecting links becoming cloisters. 


ton, Report on Plans Presented to the Building Committee, by R. Clipston Sturgis 
(1905), p. 15. 

These five requirements are met as follows in the diagrams: (1) the entrance 
of each building of the group is on the corridor system connecting all; (2) the 
naves offer a clear circuit through the most important exhibits shown under 
the best conditions; (3) the route through them brings the visitor to the point 
where he entered, and offers him the alternative of returning to the main en- 
trance without seeing anything else; (4) a longer but equally simple route leads — 
through the outlying or subsidiary galleries, which are entirely independent of 
the naves though no less accessible; (5) the work and the study of the depart- 
ment go on in rooms reached by stairs, and hence wholly aside from either the 
primary or secondary thoroughfares for visitors. It is a fortunate circumstance 
that a museum scheme aiming at ideal lighting should prove to embody also 
an ideal of arrangement reached irrespective of lighting. 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 235 


The result is a scheme which appears, and has reason to 
claim itself, adapted to the needs of museums generally, 
scientific or artistic, large or small. 


The solution of the lighting problem in museums has 
been halted for a century by a datum of mistaken erudi- 
tion. The choice of the Classical type — based ultimately 
on columns against a blank wall — for buildings devoted 
to vision would be an absurdity were it not a blunder. 
The hypethral myth is gone, and reasoning should re- 
place it. Which way should light come in a room where 
people walk about to use their eyes by it? Neither verti- 
cally, nor horizontally, but diagonally. 

A fundamental objection interposes itself. There is 
another psychological factor as important as glare. How- 
ever advantageous to the visitor’s eyes, are not the high 
windows depressing to his spirits? Things are better seen, 
but are they as much enjoyed? Yet to be enjoyed is what 
they are seen for. In our preoccupation with the objects, 
have we not taken the heart out of the spectator? 

Two answers may be made to this objection. It may 
be charged first with confusing the effect of vertical light, 
which is really depressing, with that of diagonal light, 
which is only quieting. A small courtyard with high 
walls is almost invariably dismal; and as far as lighting 
goes, every top-lighted museum gallery is such a small 
courtyard. But a cathedral never depresses; it only sol- 
emnizes us. A high-windowed banquet hall is not gloomy; 
it is only stately. The Pantheon at Rome, centrally 
lighted from the sky, may be cheerless; but St. Peter’s, 
though no more abundantly lighted from its high lu- 
nettes, is almost a jubilant place. Unquestionably the 
reputation of museums as mausolea of art, cold storage 
warehouses for their contents as they have been called, 


236 MUSEUM IDEALS 


is partly, perhaps wholly, due to their predominant use 
of top light. Their usual architectural type derives indeed 
from the style of which the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus 
was a capital example. No wonder that they retain the 
association of the tomb. But high side light is associated 
only with the most dignified interiors of all kinds. 

The second answer is that museums are after all asso- 
ciated with death, in that they are the resurrection places 
of things which were made for other surroundings, but 
whose natural life is ended. The pictures come from 
churches, public buildings or private dwellings now de- 
stroyed or put to other uses. The sculptures come from 
architectural monuments now dismembered. The objects 
of minor art once graced all the scenes and occasions of 
every day, from balls to battlefields. Hence to see them 
as it was intended they should be seen requires an imag- 
inative effort, a detachment from the here and now, 
and an immersion in the there and then. A system of 
their lighting which shall hold away from us the distrac- 
tions of the present moment, and enable us to concentrate 
ourselves upon each individual thing and live into its 
departed atmosphere is an essential of good seeing. Far 
from taking the heart out of the spectator, windows 
which show him only treetops or the sky help to put into 
him the heart he needs to see them as they still may 
be seen. Gloom hinders, but peace of mind helps, The 
Salle de Travail of the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris 
is adorned above the bookshelves with frescoed lunettes 
depicting only foliage; and to lift one’s eyes to these is 
just the featureless distraction the reader needs. So Wag- 
ner, in designing his theatre at Bayreuth, arranged that 
orchestra and audience should disappear for every hearer, 
leaving only the scene before him massively framed like 
a great painting. A true psychological instinct inspired 


GLARE IN MUSEUM GALLERIES 237 


this arrangement, and would be followed by museums 
that should raise the light openings of their galleries out 
of the view of the visitor, without choosing for them the 
dispiriting form of apertures overhead. “Il y a deux choses,” 
wrote La Rochefoucauld, “‘qu’on ne doit pas regarder 
en face: le soleil et la mort’’; — but the maxim demands 
completion, “‘excepté en regardant l’un a travers l’autre.” 
A mausoleum looks straight at death; but a cathedral 
through death at immortality: and a museum, which does 
the same, may claim the right to pattern after the cathedral. 

The solution of the problem of overgrowth in museums 
is as simple as Columbus’s egg. They must not be allowed 
to become so large. It has been proposed that smaller 
museums, each with its different scope, should be scat- 
tered about our newer cities as they have already grown 
up without design in older centres. The idea of small 
museums is most attractive, but one does not just see 
why the modern world should seek to imitate the chance 
result of former times. 

Why not gather the museums of a town, or most of 
them, together in its most favorable spot, keeping them 
just far enough apart not to obstruct each other’s light, 
but still near enough together to be managed, and on 
occasion used, as one? This is the group system here pro- 
posed. 

It may be replied to this entire argument, and with 
truth, that apart from isolated and more or less far-off 
examples, attic lighting, together with the multiple scheme 
developed from it, is purely a theory. The question then 
arises whether it would not reward some museum with 
great expectations to spend five thousand dollars in con- 
structing and testing an experimental attic-lighted room 
as a premium of insurance against the possible waste of 
five million dollars in unsatisfactory buildings. 


Il 
THE SKIASCOPE 





THE SKIASCOPE IN USE 


A LoNG and unfamiliar name for a small and not un- 
familiar thing. The word means ‘‘ shadow-seer,”’ the seer 
from and into shadows (cxia, shadow; cxoréw, to see). The 
skiascope uses looking from shadow as a means of looking 
into shadow. It has been devised for the purpose of dem- 
onstrating a visual principle not yet given the importance 
it deserves by museum people. 

For good seeing, it 1s more important that the eyes should be suf- 
ficiently shaded than that the object should be abundantly lighted. 

To prove this principle we must provide some means 
of diminishing our field of view so that the eyes are shaded 
approximately from everything except the object looked 
at. The skiascope does this in handy fashion, with the 
result that we see things well through it in almost any 
lighting. The instrument has, therefore, at once a prac- 
tical and a theoretical value. The user not only sees bet- 
ter with it but also learns that the chief obstacle to seeing 
things well is generally glare from elsewhere. 


THE SKIASCOPE ) 239 


In artificial lighting the importance of keeping sources 
of light out of the eyes is now admitted. The lesson was 
taught conspicuously at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, 
and later at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. 
We have found that the best way to show things at night 
is not to light them up in the old fashion, by distributing 
sources of light over them to dispute the observer’s visual 
strength with the objects to be seen, but to show them 
in a glow, which, though it may be dimmer, contains no 
brilliant points to deaden the susceptibility of the eyes. 

In natural lighting it may be impossible to conceal the 
sources of light: for example, the low windows or the ceil- 
ing lights of a side- or top-lighted museum gallery. An 
alternative in case of need is to shade the visitor’s eyes; 
and this the skiascope does. 

The instrument consists essentially of a small, light box 
with flexible sides, open at the ends, lined with black and 
divided longitudinally by a central black partition; one 
end of the box being shaped to fit closely against the eyes, 
and the other broadened to give a sufficient field of view. 
The flexible sides permit of shutting the skiascope up 
when not in use. Wires forming a handle turn up out of 
the way, reducing the instrument to about the size of a 
small thin book, capable of being carried in a good-sized 
pocket. 

Eye-shades of various forms are common. The skia- 
scope is a novelty only in the handy way in which it re- 
stricts the observer’s view to a small part of the normal 
field of vision. At a distance of six or eight feet from a 
wall he sees only a patch of it perhaps four feet high and 
three feet broad. If the space between two adjacent win- 
dows of a side-lighted room is not too narrow, he can 
inspect an object hung between them without getting the 
glare from either. The view of an object so placed which 


240 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the skiascope gives is a revelation. Generally, the window 
wall of a gallery is regarded as so much space lost for seri- 
ous exhibition purposes; or at best as appropriate only 
for things not needing, perhaps not deserving, to be seen 
in detail. The skiascope makes the space on a window wall 
as valuable within limits as any. A window wall is lighted 
(unless there is cross-lighting) only indirectly and by re- 
flection from the rest of the room; but this illumination 
proves in most cases quite enough. Not lack of light but 
lack of sight accounts for its unavailability to the un- 
shielded eye. 

But the value of an eye-shade like the sicecseee is not 
confined to window walls. Raising it to the eyes in a top- 
lighted gallery, a noticeably deéper tone spreads over the 
pictures, and accentuated lights and shadows appear on 
the sculptures. We realize that generally the fraction of 
ceiling light within our view and perhaps also illuminated’ 
parts of walls and floors, have robbed the canvases and 
marbles of a share of their designed effectiveness. 

The museum use of an eye-shade, however handy, will 
doubtless always be a restricted one. For the occasional 
advantages it gives, people will hardly care to burden 
themselves with an apparatus conspicuous in use and need- 
ing to be carried about. Yet in galleries abroad the old- 
fashioned tubular eye-shades are sometimes handed visi- 
tors for use in inspecting individual masterpieces. In 
certain galleries skiascopes might, it would seem, be added 
to the facilities, such as chairs and catalogues, offered for 
the visitor’s comfort and information. When not in use, 
the skiascope might hang at the doorways. Specially in- 
terested persons would certainly appreciate an aid to 
good seeing; and the offer of it would give the museum a 
wider freedom in the use for exhibition purposes of any 
parts of the interior particularly subject to glare. 


THE SKIASCOPE 241 


The theoretic value of the skiascope is incontestable. 
The demonstration it gives that avoidance of glare in the 
visitor’s eyes is a prime necessity in museum planning 
and installation will surely in future lead to the adoption 
of means to minimize the evil. The skiascope is here 
offered as a factor in an anti-glare propaganda. 





THE SKIASCOPE CLOSED 


As the skiascope will very likely never become a commercial 
proposition, it may be of use to describe its make and making 
in detail. 


Parts 


1. Two pieces of three-sixteenths inch board six and one half 
inches long by five inches wide, one end shaped as shown (full 
size for convenience of tracing) in Figures 1 and 1 bis. Each is 
stained oak on one side and the edges. These are respectively 
the forehead and cheek pieces of the instrument. The forehead 
piece has two grooves, one sixteenth inch deep, on the raw side, 
and the cheek piece one, as shown. 

2. A piece of black flannel, not too heavy, shaped as shown in 
Figure 2. This makes the flexible sides, the middle partition and 
the lining of forehead and cheek pieces. 

3. Two wire attachments (size 14) forming together the 
handle of the skiascope, shaped as shown in Figure 3. The three 
ends of these wires are secured in the grooves of the boards by 
minute staples driven through and clinched. 


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THE SKIASCOPE 245 


Construction 
4. The pair of lining blocks each shaped as in Figure 4 and 


with three-sixteenths inch central holes from end to end are used 
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the instrument while it is being cut and glued together as here- 
after described; and also later in glueing the forehead and 
cheek pieces to the lining. 

5. The bed-block shaped as shown in Figure 5 is used in glue- 
ing the forehead and cheek pieces to the lining when this is 


& 4 ° 





1 


Side 





Lig Ye elanger End. 


formed up over the lining blocks. It brings the upper surface of 
the lining blocks to a level position in order to hold a weight or 
clamps conveniently. 


246 MUSEUM IDEALS 


6. The two wire clamps, each shaped as shown in Figure 6, 
are used in the process of covering the lining blocks with the 
flannel used as lining in order to hold them closely together as 





earger end, 





hereafter described. The two prongs of one are inserted into 
the central holes of the larger ends of the two blocks and those 
of the other into the holes at the smaller ends. 


To form up the lining 


Cut a piece of the flannel somewhat larger than the pattern 
shown in Figure 2: as there indicated by dotted lines. Flannel 
being a stretchy material, the attempt to fit it if previously cut 
according to the pattern is likely to give trouble. Flannel is 
chosen rather than any stiff material for the less disturbing lines 
with which it frames the field of view. Cut a piece off the flannel 
along the line AB. With a red crayon draw a line on the flan- 
nel parallel to and half an inch back of the line AB. Fasten the 

flannel along this line to one edge of one of 

37 the rectangular sides of one of the lining 

blocks with a few thumb tacks. The small 
end of the block should lie toward A, the 
large end toward B. Wrap the block tightly 
in the flannel. When wholly covered with 
: one thickness, place the other lining block 
Firg, 6. against the covered block, small end to 

small end, and its rectangular sides in a 

plane with the rectangular sides of the covered block. Insert 
the two clamps in the two ends of the blocks, thus fastening 
them firmly together. Now, with the rest of the flannel, cover 


ah 





THE SKIASCOPE 247 


the second block tightly, securing it at the last edge reached 
by another set of thumb tacks. The flannel being larger than 
the pattern will lap over the ends of the blocks and more than 
cover the last face of the second block. Trim off the superfluous 
flannel at the four edges of both ends and also at the last edge 
secured by the thumb tacks, leaving here also a_ border half 
an inch wide as on the front edge AB. Now, glue the two flannel 
borders down, letting the glue run closely along the interstice 
between the blocks. This secures the line CD of the finished 
lining shown in Figure 2 to the line C’D’ in that figure, and the 
line EF to the line E’F’. When the glue has set under pressure, 
remove the thumb tacks. With pieces of pasteboard cut to the 
two lining curves shown by dotted lines in Figures 1 and 1 bis, 
mark out these curves in red crayon at the smaller end of the 
covered blocks, now secured together, one curve on each rec- 
tangular face. Run the crayon also along all four longitudinal . 
edges of the covered double block. This is necessary because 
the lining must be taken off the double block to be further cut 
and needs to be replaced in exactly the same position for the 
final glueing on of the forehead and cheek pieces. Now take 
the clamps out of the blocks and slip the lining from them. 
Then, at the larger end of the lining, cut the central partition 
away from the top (forehead face) and bottom (cheek face) of 
the lining to a point one and a half inches from the end. Then, 
cut straight across the central partition from the end of one of 
the previous cuts to the end of the other. Repeat the process at 
the small end of the lining, with this difference: the cut along 
the top (forehead face) of the lining should extend to a point 
one and three eighths inches from the end, and the cut along 
the bottom (cheek face) to a point two and one eighth inches 
from the end. After the central partition has thus been cut 
away at both ends, cut out the lunettes marked out in red crayon 
on each face of the lining. Carefully replacing the lining blocks 
in the lining and clamping them and seeing that the ends and 
the marked edges are exactly in place, put the whole on the 
bed-block as shown in Figure 5 in readiness for the final glue- 
ing on of the forehead and cheek pieces. 


To glue on the forehead and cheek pieces 


As the wires in the grooves project slightly above the surface 
of the forehead and cheek pieces, it is ‘well to have two shallow 
grooves in corresponding places on that side of the lining blocks 
to which the forehead piece is to be glued and one on the other 


248 MUSEUM IDEALS 


side. Mark out the lining curve which appears on the upper . 


face of the covered block on the wired side of the corresponding 
forehead or cheek piece. Spread an even coat of glue, neither too 
thin nor too thick, over the whole wired surface up to the lining 
curve and place this piece upon the covered double lining block, 
taking care that it is exactly in place. Turn the whole over on 
the bed-block and glue the other piece to the other flannel sur- 
face of the lining in the same way. When the glue has set, re- 
move the weight or clamps used in the process, take out the lin- 
ing blocks and trim out the strip of flannel which forms the 
lunette and which has been left as a stay. The skiascope is 
then finished. If the pressure has forced some of the glue 
through the flannel and caused it to stick to the blocks, they 
may be freed by carefully inserting a thin knife. But much 
the better way is to insert strips of paraffin paper in advance 
between the lining blocks and the flannel. The glue will not 
penetrate the paper strips, and they can easily be removed 
after removing the blocks. | 





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INSTALLATION 
THE IDEAL OF RESTFUL INSPECTION 


I 
MUSEUM FATIGUE! 


THE museum in which the photographs here reproduced 
were taken no longer exists; but the conditions depicted 
are still well-nigh universal. The museum was the first 
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, of which the present 
great structure on the Fenway became in 1909 the suc- 
cessor. The conditions are those resulting from the type 
of museum case and of museum installation widely ac- 
cepted as standards among us. 

The photographs were taken with the object of deter- 
mining by actual observation just what kinds and amount 
of muscular effort are demanded of the visitor who en- 
deavors to see exhibits as museum authorities plan to 
have them seen. “Museum fatigue” is an admitted evil, 
hitherto tacitly accepted as admitting only relief. May 
not a study of how it comes about suggest some means 
of prevention? 

The method adopted in the inquiry was the following. 
A series of simple questions was devised relating to cer- 
tain objects mostly installed at higher or lower levels and 
in cases; and an observer was photographed in the act of 
answering them. The observer, an intelligent man with 
good eye-sight, and well accustomed to museums and their 
contents, was instructed to answer the questions with the 

1 Reprinted from The Scientific Monthly, January, 1916. 


252 MUSEUM IDEALS 


least possible exertion and to hold the positions he needed 
to assume for the purpose until he could be photographed. 

The pictures obtained indicate that an inordinate 
amount of physical effort is demanded of the ideal visitor 
by the present methods in which we offer most objects to 
his inspection. It is at once evident that these methods 
form an effective bar to the adequate fulfilment by mu- 
seums of the public function they aim to perform. Not 
even the hardiest sight-seer will long go through with the 
contortions which the pictures indicate are needed for any 
comprehension of much of what we display to him. After 
a brief initial exertion he will resign himself to seeing 
practically everything imperfectly and by a passing glance. 
If the public is to gain more than a minute fraction of the 
good from museum exhibits which is theirs to give and 
which now can be gained by the private student, radical 
changes in our methods of exhibition are imperative. As 
at present installed, the contents of our museums are in 
large part only preserved, not shown. 

Indeed, we may even go further and claim that in some 
proportion of the objects put on public view in every mu- 
seum the qualities for which they are shown are rendered 
wholly invisible by the way they are shown. They are so 
placed and in such lighting that it is a physical impossi- 
bility by any exertion of limb or eye to descry the partic- 
ular characteristics to which they owe their selection for 
show. This is literally an absurd state of things; yet there 
would be little risk in offering to point out to any museum 
curator objects so concealed by their installation in his 
own museum. | 

On the other hand, a proportion of the objects in every 
museum may be adequately seen without any marked 
exertion. These are the instances in which objects are 
installed approximately on a level with and near to the 


MUSEUM FATIGUE 253 


eye of the visitor as he stands upright before them. They 
constitute a minor fraction of museum installations, and 
are not represented in the accompanying illustrations. 
Our present purpose is to inquire into the larger pro- 
portion of instances in which adequate seeing demands 
exertion. 

The questions and answers here follow, grouped ac- 
cording to the types of attitude represented in the illus- 
trations. The cases called floor cases are from six to seven 
feet high, two and one half to three feet broad, five feet 
long, with a main floor at about thirty inches from the 
ground, and supported either on legs or on a closed lower 
compartment. 

These pictures indicate that the principal sources of 
that part of museum fatigue which comes from muscular 
effort to see objects well are two: (1) low installations in 
upright cases; (2) broad installations in flat or desk cases. 
High installation may put objects out of sight, but is a 
minor source of fatigue; while to bring the eye within seeing 
distance of low shelves is apt to demand bending the knees; 
and the effort to see objects at the back of wide desk or 
flat cases requires bending at the hips. The pictures in- 
dicate further two ways in which objects may be exhib- 
ited in museum cases so as to make invisible some or all 
of the features which warrant their exhibition. They may, 
first, be concealed in part by others. They may, second, 
be placed too far back from the glass to be seen in the 
necessary detail. The effort of the eye muscles cannot 
be directly shown in pictures, but is evidently consider- 
able and may be hopeless. 

The inferences are that museum fatigue would be 
greatly helped were upright cases to stand higher, flat and 
desk cases to be made narrower, and all cases shallower 
from front to back. This shallowing would put an end to 


254 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the concealment of one object by another by putting an 
end to the exhibition of multiple rows of objects on the 
same shelf. All cases would be single row cases. The shal- 
lowing would further bring all the contents of a case within 
the limits of close scrutiny. These inferences from the 
present experiment may be made more precise by others 
based on measurements of the human body and of the 
contents of museum shelves. Estimating the height of the 
average visitor at sixty-three inches, his eye will be about 
sixty inches above the floor and his hip joint about thirty- » 
eight or thirty-nine inches. For the minutest inspection 
of a work of art, as for reading fine print, the eye should 
not be more than about twelve inches from it. The dis- 
tance forward of a perpendicular from the feet, to which 
the eye may easily be carried by bending the body from 
the hips, is not over about fifteen inches. Of the objects 
commonly preserved in cases in our museums, but a small 
fraction, perhaps hardly more than a twentieth, are over 
twelve inches in diameter. Of objects of the nature of 
ornamented surfaces in frames or settings, or otherwise 
needing to be seen only on one side, but a smaller propor- 
tion are more than two or three inches from front to back. 

From these figures approximate dimensions for cases 
which shall reduce the muscular effort of good seeing to 
a minimum may be deduced as follows: The lowest exhi- 
bition level for case objects should not be more than 
eighteen inches below the average eye, or forty-two inches 
from the ground instead of thirty inches or less, as often 
at present. This would be the indicated height for the 
bottom of upright cases and the front level of desk or flat 
cases. The use of the base compartment of cases for ex- 
hibition should be given up. The breadth of flat cases 
should not be greater than about eighteen inches, in- 
stead of twenty-eight inches or more as at present. Desk 


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MUSEUM FATIGUE 265 


(inclined) cases may be somewhat wider. Beyond these lim- 
its the eye cannot easily be brought within close seeing 
distance of the back of the case. The depth of flat or desk 
cases from the glass to the bottom should not be greater 
than from two to four inches, instead of from six to 
twelve inches as at present. A depth from front to back 
of four inches would often also suffice for wall cases, in- 
stead of from sixteen to twenty-four inches as at present. 
Six inches might be regarded as their maximum supposing 
them used to receive only objects seen to full advantage 
from one side. The depth of upright floor cases from front 
to back should not exceed twelve inches. A smaller stand- 
ard depth of eight inches would probably also be found 
useful. Upright floor cases or wall cases might be seventy- 
eight inches high instead of one hundred or more as at 
present. It is true the bottom of an object twelve inches 
high installed at the top of such a case with three inches 
above to spare would be three inches above the average 
eye, and the top fifteen inches. But since, on the twelve- 
inch shelf assumed, all parts of the object would be within 
six inches of the glass, it would all be within practicable 
seeing distance, although only the lower part could be 
closely examined. 

The stability of floor cases a foot or less in breadth and 
six feet six inches high would require to. be secured by 
special means. If the legs were perpendicular, they would 
need to be fastened to the floor, otherwise they would 
need a wider bearing by extended feet; or a removable 
bar at the top of the case connecting it with another might 
be given a design in harmony with their framing and join 
the two into a stable pair. 

One result of the use of shallower cases would be that 
there would be less waste space within them. At present 
the space within a floor case of the usual broad dimensions 


266 MUSEUM IDEALS 


is only very partially used. The exhibit is generally ar- 
ranged in a pyramidal form of which the lower levels are 
seen against the successive steps of an interior pedestal 
and only the top row is shown above it and can be seen on 
all sides. All the space above the lower rows of objects is 
empty. In the narrow case proposed there would be in 
general no pedestal, but shelves alone. There would be no 
empty space above any row of objects and every object 
would be visible from all sides. Since a larger number of 
cases could be placed in a given area, another result would 
be that a greater proportion of museum objects would be 
exposed to view on all sides. An economy of case-space 
would be coupled with a completer showing of case- 
contents. 

Such changes would make a radical difference in the 
appearance of museum galleries. They would be fitted 
with a number of small cases, very shallow and standing 
but not reaching high, instead of a few large ones, broad, 
set low and rising higher. Wall cases would shrink to one 
quarter their present depth, upright floor cases to one third 
their present depth and to a less average height, and desk 
and flat cases to three quarters their width and one third 
their vertical depth. Delicate, instead of heavy, construc- 
tion would be the rule. The exhibits would be shown 
spaced and unobstructed instead of grouped into decora- 
tive pyramids or serried ranks. The small fraction of 
objects which are over twelve inches in diameter would be | 
installed either in the open or each in its separate case. 

Nevertheless, there would remain opportunity within 
the cases for the more or less advantageous showing of 
more or less meritorious objects. The upright cases on the 
floor and the wall would still have a piano nobile, or main 
level, in the space directly opposite the eye. Between a 
bottom at forty-two inches above the floor and a top at 


MUSEUM FATIGUE 267 


seventy-eight inches, there would be thirty-six inches of 
space which, if divided by two shelves giving three spaces 
of about a foot each, would offer three gradations of prom- 
inence: first, the middle at fifty-four to sixty-six inches, 
because seen without effort by the average eye at sixty 
inches; second, the lowest, because perfectly seen at forty- 
two to fifty-four inches by inclining the body a few inches; 
and third, the uppermost, from sixty-six to seventy-eight 
inches, because seen simply by raising the glance, although 
inaccessible to the closest inspection. If divided by a cen- 
tral shelf at sixty inches, the upper space of eighteen inches 
would be'the prano nobile, because the lower and generally 
more important part of the object would be open to close 
inspection without fatigue. On the under shelf, only the 
upper and generally less important part of an object could 
be studied without bending. 

In cases such as these museums would, for the first 
time, possess veritable show cases. Hitherto these in- 
dispensable protective devices have in reality been glazed 
storage chests valuable primarily for their capacity. Their 
wide shelving with double or triple or multiple rows of 
objects is a survival from the days when museums were 
thought of as magazines where things were kept in safety 
ready for inspection when needed. Such shelving has no 
real place in these days of serious attempts to deal with 
the problems of public show. 

The present argument is not the first that has been 
offered in support of narrow cases; nor are they unknown 
in newer museum installations. Mr. Lewis Foreman Day 
wrote a few years ago: “‘Museum cases are nearly always 
too big — and especially they are much too wide.’ One 
argument against deep cases is, “that the things at the 
back of them (and in the centre of square cases) are re- 
duced to background. Another is, you cannot get close 


268 MUSEUM IDEALS 


enough to see things properly. ... Think what a big vase 
you can put on a mantel-piece from nine to twelve inches 
wide, and you will realize how seldom it is necessary to 
have cases much wider than that. ... Some of the cases 
at Munich are not more than nine inches deep, and it is 
astonishing the size of the objects they hold.” ! 

The smaller shelf-widths which Mr. Day notes at 
Munich have come into occasional use also in other mu- 
seums, American and foreign. In Boston the show-space 
tends also to be set higher. 

The reduction in the cubic contents of museum cases 
here advocated, in harmony with Mr. Day’s suggestion 
and newer practice, is the second radical improvement in 
these fixtures since public museums were instituted. The 
first is an improvement from the point of view of the mu- 
seum; the second from the point of view of the visitor. 
The device known in Europe as the Reichenberger case 
(due to Dr. Gustav E. Pazaurek, Director at the time of 
the North Bohemian Museum of Industrial Art), and in 
America as the Boston case (independently invented with 
a different mechanism by Mr. W. W. MacLean of the 
Boston Museum), consists in opening a case by lifting its 
top with a windlass instead of unlocking its doors with a 
key. This was a proposal in the interest of the security of 
the contents from dust, damp, and theft. The reduction 
of the size and particularly of the depth of cases is a pro- 
posal in the interest of the easy visibility of their contents. 
By making also this second advance in the construction 
of these necessary fixtures, the museum would be in a po- 
sition to fulfil more perfectly both of its essential functions, 
first as guardian and then as expositor of the treasures 
committed to its charge. 


1 Lewis Foreman Day, F.S.A., “How to Make the Most of a Museum,” Jour- 
nal of the Society of Arts (January 10, 1908), p. 153 f. 


MUSEUM FATIGUE 269 


The use of smaller cases has for a corollary a reduction 
in the number of objects shown simultaneously. It would 
be another step in the pathway which modern museums 
have already entered upon in dividing their contents into 
show and study series and in alternating objects between 
the two. The era of smaller and changing exhibits is also 
an era of better exhibition. 











A Museum TaBourET 


II 
SEATS AS PREVENTIVES OF FATIGUE 


WE are at sea on the question of the best way to provide 
seats in a museum until we catch sight of the truth that 
their foremost office is not to restore from fatigue, but to 
prevent its advent. They are most useful, not when they 
afford the greatest ease and when they most exempt the 
visitor from the temptation to go on examining things, 
but when they afford just enough ease to make it comfort- 
able to go on looking and are conveniently distributed 
among the exhibits for this purpose. Do we attend plays 
and concerts to stand up during the performance and sit 
down during the entr’acte 2 Is not the reverse the case? 
Why, then, should we go to see pictures and statues ex- 
pecting to stand while looking at them and sit down when 
nature demands an interval of rest? To come into the 
clear about the proper kind and placing of seats in mu- 
seums, we must get rid of this exclusively therapeutic 
theory of their office and take up the prophylactic theory 
generally adopted when we inspect works of art elsewhere. 
People have long thought prevention better than cure; but 


SEATS AS PREVENTIVES OF FATIGUE 271 


have neglected the patent opportunity to apply the maxim 
which the fatigues of museum visits offer. To embrace 
this opportunity is to work for efficiency in exhibition: 
the next forward step in museum management, succeed- 
ing the epoch when immensity and multifarity of exhibits 
were the aims heedlessly sought. In this limited, but all- 
important matter of provision to keep the perceptive 
powers of visitors in all possible freshness, we must see to 
it that seats should in the main be supports rather than 
lounging places and should be abundantly distributed 
where exhibits can be adequately seen from them. 

The seats customarily provided in museums meet 
neither of these requirements. They are apt to be cush- 
ioned ottomans inviting to repose; and to be so placed 
either in the centre of galleries or along walls that nothing 
but a general view of the exhibits can be obtained from 
them. So placed they have their manifest use. Yet the 
positions chosen are often such that sitting down one be- 
comes a cynosure; when one wants and ought to remain 
a neighboring eye. 

The failure hitherto of museums to regard seats as 
means preventive of fatigue has a very evident cause. We 
do not stand up during concerts or plays because they 
can be easily brought before our ears and eyes as we sit. 
We do stand up generally in looking at museum exhibits 
because we must wander among them to see them. But 
this handicap on museums need not prevent their pro- 
vision of seats in convenient positions for looking at 
chosen objects; nor the provision of movable seats for 
the use of those who may wish to make their own choice 
of what they shall see at their ease. There must be def- 
Inite efforts in two directions: first, the provision of a 
new unit of exhibition consisting of exhibit plus seat from 
which to inspect it in comfort; second, the provision of 


272 MUSEUM IDEALS 


easily movable seats scattered among the exhibits in such 
a way as to permit of their use at will for the same pur- 
pose. 

Unless by rare exception these simple expedients have 
as yet never been attempted in museums; another in- 
stance of the rudimentary stage in which the art of 
public exhibition yet lingers. The discussion, therefore, 
cannot yet appeal to experience; and the immediate 
task is that of suggestions toward reducing theory to 
practice. 

The establishment of the new unit of exhibition — an 
exhibit plus a seat — apparently would call for a consider- 
able modification of existing methods of arranging cases. 
The unit must be so placed as not to obstruct the free 
passage of other visitors. This demands space and an 
outlying position, either central or along a wall. The 
position along a wall has the advantage of possible near- 
ness to a window in the wall and suggests the possibility 
of lowering its sill so as to give light both stronger and 
more pleasantly directed. Nevertheless, an almost in- 
superable objection exists to the use of low side light in 
museums, in the dazzling and often insupportable glare, 
direct and reflected, which it throws into the eyes of visi- 
tors moving about. It is evident that any low window 
used for lighting the proposed unit must be alcoved or 
otherwise prevented from destroying the visibility of 
other objects beside that shown in the unit. 

Movable seats in museums are commonly provided in 
the form of chairs arranged along walls or placed in groups 
in the centres of galleries. The arrangement along walls 
presupposes either that the visitor will be willing, for pur- 
poses of rest, to make himself an animate exhibit, or will 
take the trouble and has the assurance to move the chair. 
This presupposition attributes more initiative and more 


SEATS AS PREVENTIVES OF FATIGUE — 273 


boldness to visitors than most possess. The chairs, more- 
over, are apt to be heavier than can conveniently be moved. 
Their usefulness along walls may therefore be regarded 
as minimal; and experience confirms this judgment. Cen- 
tral in a room, the backs of chairs are conspicuous and 
may interfere with the view of objects among which they 
are placed. What is wanted in the way of movable seats 
is some form of tabouret or chair without a back. This 
would at once be lighter and less conspicuous. It would 
also be less restful; but if what we seek is a means of fore- 
stalling fatigue rather than recovering from it, tabourets 
need not be condemned on this account. Further, it is 
the backs of chairs that suggest the absurd plan of ar- 
ranging them along walls where no ordinarily constituted 
person would ever want to use them. Seats without 
backs, or tabourets, are equally in place in any part of the 
room. Moreover, in a room like a museum gallery which 
is apt to contain more or fewer show cases standing on 
legs, a place offers itself under the cases for storing the 
tabourets when not in use. So put away, they would be 
near at hand when needed, while practically out of sight 
meanwhile. Doubtless it would take years for museum 
visitors to become as accustomed to finding and making 
use of tabourets under cases as they now are to other mu- 
seum appliances, such as catalogues or labels. Perhaps 
the guardians in the galleries would have to offer them at 
first, or perhaps an occasional placard would suffice to 
make visitors aware of the new facility. The plan seems 
on the face of it worth trying, particularly if some make 
of tabouret could be found that would at once be light 
and strong. A form consisting of a willow or rattan seat 
shaped like an hour-glass suggests itself. That pictured 
at the head of this article has been tried with good results 
at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It is two feet high 


Q74. MUSEUM IDEALS 


and weighs but four pounds.! Such tabourets could by 
staining be given any color that the tone of the gallery 
demands. It would be the guardians’ duty to replace them 
under the cases, or elsewhere, after use. 

The part of wisdom would seem to be to add these two 
new provisions for rest — the unit of exhibit plus seat and 
the movable seat or tabouret — to the settees, benches, and 
chairs already in use. These latter have their indispen- 
sable office also as places of rest and reflection upon what 
has gone or is coming. But used thus they answer only a 
third of the need they were intended to meet. 

The question of seats in museums has an important 
bearing upon one of the chief puzzles of museum manage- 
ment. The authorities of our art museums have hitherto 
felt more or less helpless before the problem of the use of 
the museum by the general public. Daily watching the 
tired and listless wanderers that chiefly populate our gal- 
leries, we see plainly how little they gain compared with 
what can be gained. We become impatient of the sta- 
tistics that show the comparatively feeble drawing-powers 
of exhibitions of pictures, statues, and decorative art. Are 
such things the affair of the exceptionally educated only? 
Unfortunately for this belief, the exceptionally educated 
neglect our museums even more conspicuously than the 
unlettered. There must be general underlying causes 
hindering the effectiveness of our permanent exhibitions 
of art. Pondering this question we have surmised that the 
great need of the public was preparation of mind for what 
is shown; and we have accordingly multiplied labels and 
catalogues and guides; and of late years have developed a 
new museum service in the guise of personal companion- 
ship by docents, instructors, and demonstrators. All these 


1 This tabouret has been manufactured for the Museum by the Heywood 
Brothers and Wakefield Company of Boston. 


SEATS AS PREVENTIVES OF FATIGUE 275 


things help. Nevertheless, what is more needed is that the 
works of art themselves shall have the opportunity of 
-making their impression. 

To do this they require, among other things, time. 
Looked at in leisurely fashion, most museum exhibits 
would prove objects of profitable interest, even to those 
to whom all books of interpretation may be sealed and all 
lecturing a weariness. No one can remain long among 
beautiful things arranged in stately halls and wholly fail 
to enjoy and admire both — that is, to be influenced by 
them and influenced to the identical good purpose for 
which they were made. 

Viewed from this angle, the problem of the use of the 
museum by the public becomes a problem of inducing 
visitors to stay. To make them wish to stay is to make 
them wish to come for the reward they receive by staying. 
It does not yet seem to have occurred to museum officials 
to envisage the problem thus, else they would have al- 
ready united in a movement to change their galleries from 
places to stand about in to places to sit down in. To in- 
duce a man to stay anywhere, he must be made comfort- 
able while there. With a development in the seating ac- 
commodations of museum galleries, we may expect to see 
fewer wanderers gradually becoming exhausted and more 
spectators gradually becoming interested. Museums will 
be more efficient with the public both because people in 
general will get more from them and because more people 
will come to get it. 

Hence, every museum building and installation should 
be especially studied with a view to a judicious placing 
of as many seats as possible therein. Niches and bays 
must be utilized for chairs and benches. Any furniture 
exhibited must be distinguished from seats for use by 
installation upon low pedestals. Central vacant places 


276 MUSEUM IDEALS 


must become vantage-points from which to look about - 
while seated. Single exhibits must be arranged for study 
from seats set apart for the purpose. Under all cases con- 
taining objects demanding minute inspection there must 
be light stools which visitors can draw out and drop into 
for a moment. For the purpose of a movable seat the 
tabouret here proposed promises well. 


IV 
_EXEGESIS 


THE IDEALS OF OFFICIAL COMPANIONSHIP 
_--~ AND THE INTERPRETATIVE CATALOGUE 





IV 


EXEGESIS 


THE IDEALS OF OFFICIAL COMPANIONSHIP 
AND THE INTERPRETATIVE CATALOGUE 


I 
THE MUSEUM DOCENT! 


The Church here is taken for the Church as it is docent and regent; as it 
teaches and governs. — Century Dictionary, art., “Docent”; from Archbishop 
Laud (1573-1645). 


As docent, the museum is the interpreter of its contents. 
The docent office in museums of art. 

The permanence of museum collections makes interpretative instruction 
necessary — Their excellence makes formal methods unavailable — The 
teacher and pupil are unprepared for it— The disciplinary atmosphere 
is unfavorable to it — The museum is unfitted either to be a cradle of 
artistic capacity or a guide to artistic progress — Summary. 

A model interpretation of poetry. 

Gleanings left for the disciple — A fundamental doubt. 
Canons deducible. 

Negative. 

No gossip — No generalities — No praise — No comparisons — No esthet- 
ics. 

Positive. 
The removal of misapprehension — The direction of attention: sensory and 
imaginative. 
Maxims for museum use. 
History of official interpretation in museums. 
Subordinate status of the docent office in museum economy. 


A MUSEUM is an institution founded to keep things for 
show. In the English of the seventeenth century it might 
be said to fulfil its purpose as it is gardant and monstrant; 
as it preserves and exhibits. 

To exhibit objects is to do the needful to make them 
visible. But there are two ways in which things become 
visible — to the bodily eye and to the spiritual sight. 
Gazing upon them is one thing, understanding them 


1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 
vol. rx. (1915.) 


280 MUSEUM IDEALS 


another. To fulfil its complete purpose as a show, a mu- 
seum must do the needful in both ways. It must arrange 
its contents so that they can be looked at; but also help 
its average of visitors to know what they mean. It must 
at once install its contents and see to their interpreta- 
tion. | 

Hence, to express the full duty of museums it will be 
convenient to use three adjectives, and not two only. 
Reserving the word monstrant for presentation to the 
bodily eye, we need another for the sharpening of the spir- 
itual sight. The business of mental preparation is called 
teaching, and the appropriate adjective is given in the 
quotation above. A museum performs its complete office 
as it is at once gardant, monstrant, and docent. 

The docent office differs in museums of science and mu- 
seums of art. We understand a fossil or a machine when 
we grasp the scientific or technical principles it is shown to 
illustrate; but whatever historical or professional interest 
a work of art may have, we do not understand it until we 
receive from it the impression the artist meant it should 
make upon beholders. Objects called works of art have 
meanings in the literal sense. They are one of the forms 
of human speech, one of the ways in which men utter their 
minds to one another. A fossil or a machine has meaning 
only figuratively. The one was not made by man at all, 
and the other was made, not to tell something to us but 
to do something for us. It is not enough therefore to 
understand an imaginative creation as we may under- 
stand a discovery or an invention. We must know beside 
what its maker intended it to tell us; and in order to grasp 
it as a work of art, this is all we need to understand from 
it. Its historical or professional significance is no part of 
the meaning it was made to communicate, however much 
— or little — either may aid toward the apprehension of 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 281 


that meaning. The docent duty of a museum dedicated to 
art is summed up in the revelation of the moods of sense 
and thought and feeling of which its contents are the rec- 
ords. In so far as it recognizes an independent teaching 
office, historical or professional, it treats itself, not as a 
museum of art, but as a museum of science or industry. 
With a certain danger to its usefulness, let us remember; 
for, in importance, a knowledge of the historical and pro- 
fessional principles illustrated in a masterpiece are to an 
acquaintance with the masterpiece itself as the crack- 
ling of thorns under a pot to the meal cooked by their 
burning. ; 

The art museum as docent aims to help us read works 
of art as we would read books; that is, to help us divine 
what their authors meant to say. A sensible remark of an 
old-time museum official was in effect a call for the serv- 
ice: “The larger the number of those who can appreciate 
art, the broader and surer the foundations on which the 
future of its excellence can rest.’’! For the understand- 
ing of this office two facts are of prime importance. The 
docent duty of a museum of art is not an accidental obliga- 
tion, which it may or may not be called upon to fulfil ac- 
cording as its community is more or less instructed. It 
is a necessary obligation grounded in the nature of a mu- 
seum as a permanent exhibition. Further, the docent duty 
of a museum of art is not of a piece with the education 
of the school, but radically distinguished from it by the 
selective nature of museum contents. 

A museum is ultimately responsible for certain teaching 
because it preserves things indefinitely. Any permanent 
exhibition comes sooner or later to contain objects out of 
date, and the older it grows, the more it contains and the 


1 Edward Edwards, Administrative Economy of the Fine Arts (London, 1840), 
p. 98. 


282 MUSEUM IDEALS 


more out of date some of them become. The fullest un- 
derstanding of these objects demands in the spectator 
a sympathy with the past; a sympathy in part, and al- 
ways in major part, spontaneous and not to be attained by 
taking thought, but in part also, and often in necessary 
part, capable of attainment by premeditated effort, by 
what we call instruction. Such instruction it is the duty 
of a museum to assure to its visitors, whether by impart- 
ing it directly or by seeing that they can obtain it other- 
wise. Every museum of art, by its nature as a keeper of 
things for show, creates a certain educational need, and 
assumes a certain educational obligation auxiliary to its 
ultimate purpose. 

Again, the education obligatory on a museum of art 
because of the stability of its collections differs radi- 
cally from the education of the school because of their 
quality. 

The school stands by its nature for relative excellence. 
School teaching is at once constrained to a secondary 
aim, and adapted to secondary powers. Collective in- 
struction, or teaching imparted to a number of persons 
at once, cannot convey to all an equal comprehension of 
its theme, owing to the different teachableness of differ- 
ent intelligences.! President Wilson, quoting a former col- 
league, has just reminded us that “the human mind has 
infinite resources for resisting the introduction of knowl- 
edge’ 
class is only the introduction of so much as may qualify 


’ 


; and within the finite resources of the teacher of a 


his scholars generally to answer a limited set of ques- 


1 René Bazin, in L’euvre littéraire d’Eugéne Fromentin, writes: ““He never 
suffered from that premature pruning to which we are subjected by school life 
— shut in, common to all, identical for natures so profoundly diverse that no 
one ever had the idea of sowing in one flower bed so many species of tulips, beets, 
mignonette, poppies, onions, primroses, heliotropes, as there are temperaments 
grouped in a class of children. A necessity, I willingly admit. But so much 
the better for those that escape.”’ 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 283 


tions. The instruction of the school tends unavoidably 
to aim not at education but at graduation. A man of 
science uses the expression, ‘‘ a teacher only, with no ambi- 
tions beyond enabling his classes to pass their examina- 
tions.’ 1 Again, the recipients of school instruction are 
customarily the young. It is addressed not to intelli- 
gences at the height of their powers, but to intelligences 
in process of development. Education, technically so- 
ealled, aims both at applying incomplete tests, and at 
applying them to immature minds. As well by its method 
as by its field, the school from primary to professional 
stands for relative excellence. 

The museum of art stands, on the te for absolute 
excellence. It seeks to preserve only the best of the past. 
As docent, its duty is to aid its visitors, by the use of 
whatever means prove most effective, to assimilate cer- 
tain of the highest achievements of minds at once mature 
and especially gifted. This purpose implies a docent and 
a disciple but neither a teacher by profession, nor class nor 
course nor recitation nor examination. It can be fulfilled 
only by a return to the natural sequence of question and 
answer between pupil and instructor. 

The order is reversed in the attempt to teach classes 
in courses. The education of the school consists in an- 
swering questions before they are asked. Education 
really efficient consists in letting answers follow ques- 
tions. This is the method of all the greater teachers 
of mankind. The distinction lies between collective 
teaching, compelled to aim at examination, and indi- 
vidual teaching, impelled to aim at explanation. The 
method of examination disregards, the method of ex- 
planation observes, the mental principle according to 
which we see only what we are looking for. It is the ques- 


1 Professor E. C. Pickering in Science, vol. xi1 (1915), no. 1051. 


284 MUSEUM IDEALS 


tion in the mind of the learner that makes what he learns 
part and parcel of his mental equipment. The preliminary 
act, that of the delivery of the message, may be com- 
pared to the sowing of seed, in itself a barren deed. Edu- 
cation proper does not begin until the seed germinates in 
the arrest of some pupil’s attention. The question follows, 
not asin the school, from the teacher, but from the pupil; 
and the answer to the question, not as in the school, 
given by the pupil, but contributed by the teacher, is the 
fostering care under which the seed once germinated 
may bring forth, some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred 
fold. 

The use of this natural method hampers the school in dis- 
charging its obligation to graduate; but forwards the mu- 
seum in discharging its obligation to educate. The highest 
achievements of men at once mature and especially gifted 
are what the museum has to impart; and the watchword 
of its docent task must be: “‘ He that hath ears to hear let 
him hear.”’ Uttered on behalf of beauty, this summons has 
the same universal range it had when first spoken. The 
museum Offers itself as docent not to a privileged few, but 
to every one according to his points of contact with the 
treasures it displays; and such points of contact, of one or 
another kind in infinite variety exist in every one. Amiel 
has said: ‘The supreme finesse in teaching consists in know- 
ing how to suggest; and for this the teacher must divine 
what it is that interests.”! The museum cannot teach 
under all conditions, but alone when one or another interest 
is awake in one or another visitor. In the nurture of 
these individual interests lies its office as docent. 

The inappropriateness of school methods — the pro- 
fessional instruction of a class in a course by recitations 
and examinations — to this office manifests itself in four 


1 Journal Intime, vol. 1, p. 203. 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 285 


ways. First, in the dulling of the sense of perfection in the 
_ docent representatives of the museum. The hard intellec- 
tual labor of applying halfway standards to undeveloped 
minds inures the spirit to imperfection; and whoever the 
disciples and however taught, the docent function cannot 
to good advantage be performed as an exclusive office. The 
education given by a museum of art should always be the 
partial occupation of persons engaged also in productive 
labor in competition with equals. Even the whole body 
of those whose daily duty it is to keep and augment and 
study its collections may not suffice for the work. The 
appeal of every object of art is to the spiritual kin of the 
artist, and he may often lack blood relatives on the staff. 
Is any outsider available to whom the work speaks in a 
mother tongue, and who can to practical effect speak of 
it to others, the museum must seek him also as its repre- 
sentative. Only thus can the sense of perfection, which is 
the condition of the understanding of a work of art, spread 
from its teachers to their hearers. 

Second, the use of school methods by a museum misdi- 
rects its docent work. School methods are adjusted to the 
needs of youth;.works of art are not. They were not made 
by children, nor, unless by exception, for children; and no 
aid can enable children to comprehend them fully. Car- 
lyle’s description of a boy’s awakening to the beauty of 
nature applies still more pointedly to the beauty of art. 
It was ‘‘still a Hebrew speech for me; nevertheless I was 
looking at the fair illuminated Letters and had an eye for 
their gilding.” ! The museum that treats its docent office 
as a duty chiefly owed to youth stints the children of a 
larger growth who could best profit by its instruction. 
Dr. Goode writes of museums in general: “I should not 
organize the museum primarily for the use of the peo- 

1 Sartor Resartus. 


286 MUSEUM IDEALS 


ple in their larval or schoolgoing stage of existence... . 
School days last, at the most, only from five to fifteen . 
years, and they end with the majority of mankind before 
their minds have reached the stage of growth most fa- 
vorable for the reception and assimilation of the best and 
most useful thought.” ! School classes marshalled through 
museum halls may afford gratifying statistics, but the 
invisible census of educational result would make the 
judicious grieve. The practice in museums of art has the 
same foundation and the same limitations as the attempt 
to make monuments of literature into subjects of school 
instruction. Jules Lemaitre has written: “The soul of a 
little child well-endowed is nearer Homer than the soul of 
this or that bourgeois or this or that mediocre academi- 
cian.” The remark accuses modern life, both the business 
and the scholastic life, of destroying the freshness of feel- 
ing and naivété of apprehension which inspired the Iliad 
and the Odyssey. Freshness and naivété are, indeed, 
conditions necessary for any understanding of a work of 
art; but they are not conditions sufficient for its assimila- 
tion. The soul of an artist can be evoked from his work 
only by his spiritual peers. Dante, addressing Virgil, 
says: “Thy noble words honor both thyself and those 
who hearken to them.” But school boys since have sel- 
dom hearkened. Many, like Byron, lose even the capacity 
to hearken.? 


“Then, farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, 
Not for thy faults but mine; it is a curse 
To understand, not feel, thy lyric flow, 
To comprehend, but never love, thy verse.” 


An Indian saying compares the artist to the moon which 
can draw the sea but makes no appreciable difference in 
1 G. Brown Goode, “‘The Museum of the Future,” Annual Report of the 


Smithsonian Institution (1897), part 1, p. 249. 
2 Inferno, 1, 113, 114. 3 Childe Harold, Canto tv. 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 287 


the level of a well; and, it may be added, can move neither 
if frozen. The dulling of the sense of perfection which 
handicaps the teacher by profession needs no proof more 
irrefragable than is given by school editions of many lit- 
erary classics. To attempt to put within adolescent grasp 
masterpieces embodying the utmost reaches of thought and 
refinements of expression, the fruit of the richest experi- 
ence, is treachery to art in the museum as in the class in 
literature. The practical necessity of expurgation in both 
cases should be warning enough of the unwisdom of the 
enterprise. To the adolescent the sex-impulse is but just 
beginning the long course of its irradiation through the 
whole of life which fills the consciousness of the adult with | 
ineffable echoes “‘from Heaven across the World to Hell” 
—as Goethe describes the action of Faust.! To piace 
before a boy or girl a work of art containing, as most do, 
ingredients from this all-compelling and all-comprehend- 
ing fact, is to invite its misunderstanding. Whether the 
process may not morally weaken also is often an open 
question. There is solid psychological ground for the 
objection, intemperately voiced from time to time by a 
few fanatics, to indiscriminate museum visits by school 
classes. The peril should not be blinked by museum au- 
thorities, but should suggest the inquiry whether the whole 
“educational racket”? — as the profane might term the 
attempt to turn school children into habitués of museums 
— does not rest upon an assumption due simply to men- 
tal inertia — the assumption, namely, that whatever the 
adult can assimilate to his profit, can and should be pre- 
sented and expounded to the young. 

Third, the use by a museum of school methods devital- 
izes its docent work. The purpose of the docent is to lead 
his disciples on to enjoyment. A work of art is the em- 


1 Conversations with Eckermann. 


288 MUSEUM IDEALS 


bodiment of a creative joy, or as a work of art it is worth- 
less; and to get it enjoyed as it was made to be enjoyed 
is the be-all and the end-all of museum instruction proper. 
The purpose of the teacher is to impart knowledge; a 
divergent aim, and under school conditions in a measure 
incompatible. The “Cicerone” of the Swiss critic Burek- 
hardt in its original form was the written discourse of a 
docent-at-large in Italy. The docent purpose is exactly 
expressed in the sub-title of the volume — “Eine Ein- 
lectung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens”’: “a leading- 
on to (or introduction to) the enjoyment of Italian art.” 
But in posthumous editions the accumulated erudition of 
many editors, succeeding the free play of a sensitive mind, 
obscures to the reader the happy temper in which it first 
was written. The scholastic atmosphere is in three ways 
hostile to the mood of joy. The contagion from the in- 
structor is more or less in default. To guide learners along 
well-trodden paths of truth is far from the thrilling pleasure 
that Bacon, after Lucretius, found in standing on its van- 
tage ground. Again, the scholastic atmosphere is an at- 
mosphere of more or less compulsion, and again, of more 
or less self-consciousness. Collective instruction presup- 
poses uniform exercises, none exactly responding to the 
needs of any pupil; and the shadow of the pedagogic 
disapproval chills the spirit turned inward upon the 
thought of its own relation to a standard. Unless a mu- 
seum is to fail essentially in its teaching office, its in- 
struction must be accomplished in holiday mood, without 
drudgery for the docent, and without tasks or tests for 
the disciple. 

Finally, the use of school methods in a museum fosters 
a misconstruction of its docent obligation. Since schools 
are founded to impart systematic, knowledge or practical 
skill, the museum may easily be thought bound as docent 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 289 


to teach the history, principles, and practice of the arts it 
represents, or even to exert a commanding influence on 
their current development. Yet both ideas are miscon- 
ceptions, the first excusable, the last egregious. As a per- 
manent public exhibition a museum is bound to see that 
its community has access to means of understanding its 
exhibits. But the teaching of the various disciplines they 
illustrate, theoretical and practical, is a wholly different 
business, without basis either in gardant or monstrant func- 
tions. The mistake of confusing it with them is excusable 
because the obligation to see that works of art are pub- 
licly understood has awaited the creation of institutions 
to preserve them for public benefit. Before museums 
existed the artistic public, the spectator, the other half 
of the incomplete being we call an artist, had no official 
representative. Instruction in art meant only the incul- 
cation of art history and theory and the training of em- 
bryo painters and sculptors. The fine art of beholding 
grew wild. To-day museums are founded everywhere in 
this country in younger communities with only the scant- 
iest opportunities for the upbuilding of permanent col- 
lections of fine art. So placed a museum becomes less an 
exhibition than a centre for artistic interests of all kinds; 
and its docent office presents itself as the duty of theoret- 
ical and technical instruction. Nevertheless, the condi- 
tion is ephemeral, the sign of an undeveloped machinery 
of civilization. It joins functions alien in method and 
scope, and in a measure antagonistic. The museum as 
docent teaches objects; it instructs toward its exhibits. 
As the purveyor of general knowledge about art, it teaches 
subjects; it instructs from its exhibits. Again, a museum 
official’s duties cover many fields beside the history and 
theory of art; and the history and theory of art cover 
many fields beyond the collections in his care. A further 


290 MUSEUM IDEALS 


radical difference separates an exhibition from a school of 
practice. The one belongs to the contemplative life; the 
other to the active life. The museum is the home, not of 
the artist — the creator — but of the critic — the spec- 
tator. The museum is catholic in spirit; the technical 
school separatist. The judgments of artists, one upon 
another, are, as Stendhal suggested, so many “certificates 
of resemblance.” ! Technical instruction tends to make 
the museum one-sided; the museum to make technical 
instruction superficial. These are the conclusions of ex- 
perience. Of the combination of other functions with that 
of the museum, Mr. Hedley writes: “‘Museum evolution 
tends toward specialization; the narrower its limits, the 
higher the grade an institution generally reaches.” 2 Of 
museum buildings Dr. Pazaurek writes: “It is a question 
seriously to be discussed whether in planning art build- 
ings de novo the union of school and museum, by some 
thought absolutely essential, is really to be reeommended. 
Experience seems often to teach otherwise, for where 
they have been under one roof either one or other has 
suffered. ... Either the museum has flourished and the 
school vegetated in secret, or — under another manage- 
ment — the school has taken a great start while the mu- 
seum has sunk to the level of a neglected school-collec- 
tion. When this subject is considered dispassionately and 
thoroughly, these twins that only too easily grow together 
will in many cases be separated betimes, and two entirely 
distinct buildings erected.” * From this counsel, as from 
the principles involved, the inference is that while freely 
offering its aid to schools, both theoretical and technical, 

1 Histoire de la peinture en Italie, vol. 1 (Index). 

2 Charles Hedley, Musewm Administration in the United States, Australian 
Museum, Sydney, Miscellaneous Series, vol. vi (1913), p. 30. 


3G. A. Pazaurek: ‘‘Museumsbauten,” Wiener Bauindustrie Zeitung, Jahr- 
gang 20, no. 40. (1903.) 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 291 


the museum will best perform its essential duty under 
separate management. 

The other misconception of the docent office of museums 
— that which assigns them the high duty of presiding over 
the artistic production of their time and place — rests 
upon a beclouded notion of how the artist works. He sees 
through other eyes only to use his own to better advan- 
tage thereafter. Only in the measure in which he can take 
up into himself what others have wrought will his own 
work bear comparison with theirs. To guide him after 
preparatory years would be a fatal impertinence in any 
institution. These are commonplaces of the psychology 
of fancy, illustrated in the past at every alternation of 
artistic decadence and rebirth. Lowell writes of “‘the fact, 
patent in the history of all the fine arts, that every at- 
tempt at reproducing bygone excellence by external imi- 
tation of it, or even by applying the rules which analytic 
criticism has formulated from the study of it, has resulted 
in producing the artificial and not the artistic.’ ! The 
return of the artist to nature means a transition from the 
contemplation of that which has pleased others to the 
discovery of that which pleases himself, and out of this 
immediate joy every viable product of fancy springs. 
Museum officials as arbiters of what he should paint or 
carve would be even more hopelessly out of place than 
students of literature as arbiters of what he should write. 
Museums have no mission to make the fame of artists. 
They are founded to secure it when made by the interested 
public. 

The docent office of the museum, conditioned by these 
results, thus outlines itself. Mindful of its purpose to aid 
toward the spiritual assimilation of some of the highest 
things, it should aim not at attainment, but at progress, 


1 J. R. Lowell, Literary Essays, “Swinburne’s Tragedies.” 


292 MUSEUM IDEALS 


not at graduation, but at education. It should be carried 
on, not as the sole office of a few persons, but as the duty 
on occasion of many chosen representatives. It should 
address itself chiefly to minds already mature and only 
under restrictions to children. It should be undertaken 
in the spirit of free intercourse, not in that of compulsion, 
in the spirit of play and not of work, seeking to offer not 
what the docent wants to teach but what the spectator 
wants to know. It should not ally itself with technical 
instruction, and above all should renounce the ambition to 
control the productive artist whether through patronage or 
criticism. 

What, then, shall the museum as docent say? Of what 
subject matter shall its speech consist? Let us take as 
a guide the words in which a living poet leads on his read- 
ers to the enjoyment of a poem by a foregoer. Having the 
work of art itself before us we can follow his method as 
we could not were we to quote the exposition of a picture 
or a statue. 

The introductory chapter of M. Auguste Dorchain’s 
volume, “L’ Art des Vers,” 1 instead of beginning at once 
the technical study of versification to which the book is 
to be devoted, essays by an example to quicken the 
reader’s sense of the nobility and power of poetry. Be- 
fore seeking to impart a knowledge of the art, the author 
seeks to awaken a love of it. 

Compose yourself a moment. Close your ears to the noises 
which rise from the street; forget some of your petty cares; 
let subside within your soul like dregs everything which since 
you woke has cumbered, defiled, or at least dissipated your 
mind — the reading of a useless newspaper or empty book, 
trifling talk, an idle call. Then go to your bookcase; take 
from its shelf the Orientales of Victor Hugo; open it at the 


thirty-seventh number; and, deliberately articulating each 
syllable, observing each period and comma as you would the 


1 Paris, 1905. 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 293 


rests and glides of a musical notation, read this poem in two 
strophes: 4 


EXTASE 


J’étais seul prés des flots, par une nuit d’étoiles 

Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles. 

Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde réel. 

Et les bois, et les monts, et toute la nature, 

Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure 
Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel. 


Et les étoiles d’or, légions infinies, 
A voix haute, A voix basse, avec mille harmonies, . 
Disaient, en inclinant leurs couronnes de feu; 
Et les flots bleus, que rien ne gouverne ni n’arréte, 
Disaient, en recourbant |’écume de leur créte: _ 

— C’est le Seigneur, le Seigneur Dieu! 


M. Dorchain then examines each line: 
J étais seul prés des flots, par une nuit d étoiles 


In this first line, which could not be imagined more perfectly 
simple, the whole scene is already evoked and established; the 
man, the place, and the hour. And this line, delayed in the mid- 
dle by a considerable pause, and indefinitely prolonged as by 
an organ point, thanks to the final word étovles, is all-sufficient 
in itself to balance any developments with which it might please 
the poet to follow it. Suppose a moment that he had begun the 
poem thus: 

Prés des flots 7’ étais seul, sous un crel étorlé 


This would have the same sense, yet there would be left nothing, 
absolutely nothing, of what could be called poetry. Flots and 
étoiles are the two essential words of the poem, those whose ap- 


1 The poem may be verbally rendered as follows: 


I was alone by the waves on a starry night 
Not a cloud in the skies, not a sail on the seas. 
My eyes saw beyond the real world. 
And the woods, and the mountains, and all nature 
Seemed to question, in a confused murmur, 

The waves of the seas, the stars of the sky. 


And the golden stars, infinite legions, 

With voices loud and low, in a thousand harmonies, 
Answered, bending their crowns of fire; 

And the blue waves, that nothing governs nor stays, 
Answered, curving the foam of their crests: 


It is the Lord, the Lord God! 


294 MUSEUM IDEALS 


position and opposition are to form its whole architecture. The 
word flots falls on the hemistich (halfway point) only in the line 
of the master, and the comma which follows separates the two 
elements, sea and sky. In the supposed verse, in the second half, 
the words are hard in sound, and hammered out uniformly in 
each of their syllables sous-wn-ciel-é-toi-lé. In Victor Hugo’s 
line, in the second half, thanks to the e mute of une, and to the 
fascinating alliteration formed by the two successive ns — une 
nuit — the voice glides on easily, to rest and dilate upon the 
second syllable of étoiles, and to die away finally in prolonging 
the mute syllable which ends the word and the line. 


J’étais seul prés des flots, par une nuit détoiles. 


Only compare them! 

Going on to the second line: will the poet try to define, by a 
detail, by something noticed and depicted, the picture formed 
by the first line? Another would not have failed to do it. But 
Victor Hugo does just the contrary; he does not add but can- 
cels suggestions already given. 


Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles. 


For he wants to bring us as quickly as possible from the con- 
crete to the abstract, from external to internal things, in order 
finally to lead us from internal to supernal things. And remark 
in passing the elegance of this second line, parallel to the first 
through its central comma, and by the correspondence of the 
objects described but parallel by inversion, as one may say, 
because here the sky is in the first hemistich and the sea in 
the second: a parallelism of two scales, one ascending, played 
by the left hand, one descending, played by the right. 


Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde reél 


— the real world being already reduced to its simplest expres- 
sion by the preceding line. What is the essential word here? It 
is plus loin; and you see that the poet has placed it at the point 
in the line which is necessarily the most accented — the hemi- 
stich. 

And now the poet is about to invoke all the voices that he 
hears with the spirit, just because he has passed beyond the 
world of sense. But he is already quarter way in his poem; how 
can he voice them all without destroying its just proportions? 


Et les bois, et les monts, et toute la nature. 


This conjunction et, repeated three times, proves to suffice by 
the indefiniteness it adds to the enumeration; twice in the first 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 295 


half of the line for the particular voices, once in the second for 
the entire chorus. I seem to see the leader of an orchestra, call- 
ing, by a sign toward the left, upon the strings; by a sign toward 
the right, upon the brasses; and then with both arms extended 
in a broader gesture unchaining all the instruments of the or- 
chestra. 

Unchaining them? Rather summoning them, not in all their 
strength but in all their gentleness, and muted. For these are 
voices that sing in silence, and as it were, add to the majesty 
of silence. 


Et les bois, et les monts, et toute la nature, 
Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure. 


And here instinctively the poet has used words in which three 
successive syllables are formed with the letter u: that one which 
it is impossible to sing loud on a high pitch, that one which 
cannot be pronounced otherwise than with compressed lips, 
and by hardly uttering a sound. 


Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure 
Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel. 


Try a moment to lengthen this line out to the measure of the 
others; by saying, for example: 


Les flots profonds des mers, les feux légers du ciel. 


Marvellous! It seems as if in adding these epithets, instead of 
lengthening it, we had shortened it. It is longer in the matter of 
time, and smaller for the imagination, for thought; for with these 
parasitic words it no longer awakens any idea of grandeur. As 
it was, on the contrary, reduced to the four parallel substantives 
which are the framework of the strophe, see how it girds up the 
strophe by tying the last line to the first, and how it concludes 
it by concentrating it. 

But we are already half way through the poem; and the theme 
of it has only been set forth. The poet has only six more lines 
with which to bring it to its conclusion, when one would think 
it would take several more strophes. Not at all. Six lines will 
answer. See, the poet has not let drop the initial movement. 
He has indeed put a period at the end of the first strophe, but 
here he is starting off again with the conjunction et, thereby 
linking the second strophe to the first, and even beyond the 
terminal point of the latter, rejoining the line in which already 
it is found three times: 


Et les bois, et les monts, et toute la nature. 


296 MUSEUM IDEALS 


The two strophes are no longer two, but a single musical phrase, 
destined to broaden and grow in sonority and majesty up to 
the end. 


Et les étoiles d’or, légions infinies. 
Avoiz haute, & voix basse, avec mille harmonies. 


This second line, by a proceeding natural to poetry, passes 
from one sense to another; the visual impression has become 
an auditory one. The waves and the stars must respond to the 
woods and the mountains that have questioned them, and they 
need a voice. The stars shine more or less brightly according 
to their distance and size, and they form the groups we call 
constellations. Well, the more or less intense scintillation of 
the stars becomes voices more or less sonorous, and the thousand 
figures of the constellations become a thousand harmonies, per- 
ceptible no longer to the eyes but to the ears: 

Et les étoiles d’or, légions infimes, 
A voix haute, a voix basse, avec mille harmonies, 
Disaient, en inclinant leurs couronnes de feu. 


What do they say? Will their answer fill the remaining lines? 
No, that would leave out the answer of the waves, and rupture 
the whole equilibrium of the poem. By a boldness unexampled 
in poetry, and perhaps in language, by an inspiration truly sub- 
lime, the poet arrests his phrase then and there, leaves it hang- 
ing as it were in the void, and descending from the sky to the 
sea, seeks in turn the response of the waves, to combine it with 
that of the stars in a stupendous unison, by means of the re- 
peated word disaient; and to swing them together, like the min- 
gled smoke of two censers, toward Him, whose name by a last 
artifice he delays to utter until the final line, in order that it 
may be the last word of this last strophe, as He is in the poet’s 
eyes, the last word of creation and humanity. 
' Et les flots bleus, que rien ne gouverne ni n’arréte: 


Disaient, en recourbant l’écume de leur créte, 
— C'est le Seigneur, le Seigneur Dieu! 


The three similes with which this exposition is adorned 
are the involuntary contribution of a poet, not the de- 
liberate choice of an expositor. M. Dorchain gives more 
than an exposition, but like a good docent, also leaves other 
patent details to be discovered by his disciple. (1) The 
poem describes a question and its answer, the question 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 297 


wholly contained within the first strophe, the second 
strophe wholly devoted to the answer. (2) There is a fifth 
conjunction et which binds the answer of the waves to the 
answer of the stars, as that which precedes binds both to 
the question of the woods and mountains. (3) The phrase 
“confused murmur” seems to lay bare the genesis of the 
poem in sounds of the wind through trees and over 
heights that fell on the poet’s ear like the voice of the 
land in a question. (4) In the strophe devoted to the an- 
swer, the epithets chosen for the stars and waves are 
not indifferent adjectives but those which display them in 
their proper and contrasted colors, gold and blue. (5) As 
stars but twinkle, while waves crumble, so the poet fancies 
the one but bending while the others curve downward 
as if prostrating themselves. (6) The two actions, con- 
tained and abandoned, correspond to the heavenly peace 
and the earthly turbulence of which sky and sea are ac- 
cepted representatives. (7) The reason for dignity on the 
one hand and humility on the other is suggested in de- 
scribing the stars as crowned heads moving in order, and 
the waves as unruly subjects, whose anarchic fury is em- 
phasized by the position of the word rien at the hemistich 
of the line. The little poem is a consummate gem, and 
turn it as we may, new facets dazzle us with their precision 
and brilliancy. 

A first doubt that rises to the mind in considering this 
exposition lays an axe at the root of the whole theory of 
the docent office. Is it not to destroy the power of a work 
of art to make it the subject of open conference? To point 
out sources of joy acts admittedly to dry them up. The 
mental law by which pleasure vanishes under reflective 
analysis has been a tale retold in all ages — in antiquity 
by the story of Cupid and Psyche, in the middle ages by 
stories like that of Lohengrin and Elsa. It would appear 


298 MUSEUM IDEALS 


then a folly to attempt by any verbal comment on a work 
of art to lead another on to joy in it. Schiller’s lines 


Mit dem Guertel, mit dem Schleier 
Reisst der schoene Wahn entzwei! ! 


are then a parable; and the nearest to a work of art is he 
who apprehends it from afar. Without question the mood 
in which a disciple is left by any exposition differs ma- 
terially from the mood which the artist has sought to 
convey by it. No exposition is more than a skeleton of 
complete assimilation; and none, moreover, is through 
traffic with the artist’s mind, but a traffic by change of 
trains with all its possibilities of error. Yet every perti- 
nent exposition contains elements of real assimilation; 
nuclei of understanding which when we turn to the work 
again and forget them may lead toward it. The wind of 
doctrine, while it dampens the fire kindled by the artist, 
fans sparks therein from which, when it dies away, the 
whole may again spring into flame. The full truth seems 
to be that although analysis temporarily deadens apprecia- 
tion, it tends to drop out of mind, while the understanding 
which it both quickens and adulterates tends to remain. 
Within closely guarded limits, only to be observed by a 
spirit of instinctive reverence, it would appear then that 
the docent office has a real, if modest, right to exist. 

M. Dorchain’s exposition is a guide to the docent as 
well by what it omits as by what it includes. It gives 
nothing of Victor Hugo’s personal history, of his time, or 
of the special circumstances under which the poem was 
written. These all belong to the real world; the poem to 
one “that never was on sea or land.” M. Dorchain might 
have begun thus: “It is a noteworthy fact that the emi- 
nence of Victor Hugo (1802-85) as a lyric poet was un- 


1 Das Lied von der Glocke. (‘‘ With the girdle, with the veil, the fair illusion 
falls in twain.’’) 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 299 


disputed from the beginning, while his novels and plays 
were each the object of a violent polemic. His first wide 
reputation was gained by the publication in 1829 of the 
volume entitled ‘Les Orientales’ — in effect a plea for the 
independence of Greece — from which the poem about 
to be examined is taken. With regard to the scene there 
portrayed, it is related of the poet, ete., etc., etc.,” all of 
which items serve only to domesticate us before the look- 
ing-glass through which the poem aims to translate us. 
An English workman, a passionate admirer of Tennyson, 
urged to ask an introduction to the poet, exclaimed, 
pointing upward: ‘You can’t reach Tennyson! He lives 
there!”’ Longfellow once aptly compared a poet in his life 
and in his works with a lighthouse by day and by night. 
We do not spend time over the lighthouse buildings if our 
aim is to pick up its beam. 

M. Dorchain, again, does not give us generalizations 
about the poem as a whole, but observations upon its 
details. —The one method comports with an ignorance of 
the work of art discussed which at once implies and en- 
genders indifference to it; the other demands an ac- 
quaintance with it which at once presupposes and com- 
municates enjoyment of it. M. Emile Faguet writes of 
literary criticism: 

General ideas and philosophical considerations lead one 
around but not into great writers. They can throw a little in- 
direct light on great works, but they chiefly divert and distract 
from them. A propos of a great writer is not of him; but rather 
a respectable excuse for saying nothing of him. Criticism by 
generalities is rather a means of shirking the task than of under- 
taking it; and rather a means also of setting one’s self forth 


than of interpreting the writer that one is supposed to have read 
and to want to have others read.! 


In the field of the objective arts, the histories are a 
mine of illustrations. Two identical and empty generali- 
1 In Les Annales, no. 1591 (December 21, 1914). 


300 MUSEUM IDEALS 


zations are the sole words (in translation) of one work of 
established authority upon two radically unlike master- 
pieces of sculpture — the famous equestrian statues of 
Gattamelata and Colleoni. One is “full of energetic char- 
acter and bold life’’; the other is “characteristic to excess 
but full of life and power.’ Not to have been struck by 
their difference is not to have penetrated either. Nor does 
the phrase “absolute relaxation of sleep,”’ applied in the 
same volume to Michel Angelo’s figure of Night, pene- 
trate the meaning of an attitude in which one hand has 
already slipped from beneath the forehead and the elbow 
is in the act of gliding down the thigh. The figure has been 
compared to the restless Ariadne of the Vatican, and is 
even more unrelaxed. Plainly, in this standard book, the 
broad stroke was used because either congenital inca- 
pacity or limitations of a mistaken task hindered the use 
of the fine. Generalities may be good servants in the 
docent office but they are bad masters. 

M. Dorchain’s example again teaches that the docent 
must very rarely praise directly. To affirm that some- 
thing is beautiful is to announce that the speaker takes 
pleasure in its contemplation. The docent either cannot 
or can point out sources of that pleasure. If he cannot, 
the announcement will not tend to awaken it, but rather 
will emphasize its lack in the disciple, either pique him, and 
dispose him away from enjoyment or invite him to sham 
thereafter a pleasure which he does not feel. If the docent 
can indicate its origin, this is his business, and the pre- 
liminary statement of his own good fortune is for the most 
part a gratuitous futility. To awaken a sense of beauty 
it is essential to proceed by setting causes in action, not 
by commanding their effect. If the docent’s enthusiasm 
is real— and if not he is no docent — it will pierce through 
the soberest language he may choose. The familiar his- 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 301 


tory of art already quoted again offers examples of what 
to avoid. The following forty-six words constitute one 
quarter of the whole number devoted in this volume (in 
translation) to the Sistine Madonna: “wonderful form — 
glorious raiment — heavenly apparition — lovely angel- 
faces — majesty of his eyes — saintly Pope — lovely 
demeanor — graceful head — revelation of power and 
glory — enchanting angel-boys — last touch of beauty to 
this magnificent work — deepest thought — profoundest 
insight — completest loveliness — the apex of all reli- 
gious art.” In all M. Dorchain’s exposition on the con- 
trary there are but four phrases which can be called open 
praise. He speaks once of the “fascinating” alliteration 
in wne nuit; again of the “elegance” of the second line; 
again of the whole poem as “destined to grow in sonority 
and majesty up to the end”’; and finally of the suspen- 
sion produced by the repetition of the word disaient as an 
inspiration “truly sublime.” All else in the long analysis 
is a plain description of the make of the two stanzas, yet 
conceived with an admiration so ardent that its conta- 
gion is irresistible. 

The docent must be even more circumspect in the use 
of dispraise either direct or indirect; and M. Dorchain is 
again an example to follow. He tells us neither that the 
poem is (or is not) of Victor Hugo’s best, nor (unless by 
a single playful hint) that Victor Hugo is the greatest of 
French lyrists. Such statements are rife in all descriptive 
books on art, full of references to its blossoming and de- 
cadence. Yet they convey barren statistical information, 
empty of all illuminating force. They put before the mind 
a simple quantitative picture made up of heights and 
depths. The sole pointer they offer a disciple may be thus 
expressed: ““A given amount of attention will be best 
repaid by this work or this artist.”” To which three re- 


302 MUSEUM IDEALS 


joinders are in place: first — Such is your opinion, but who 
will guarantee its justice? Yesterday proclaimed Murillo 
the greatest Spanish painter; to-day proclaims Velasquez. 
Second, admitting the infallibility of the claim you rep- 
resent, what are the merits that make up this matchless 
sum? Double stars do not constitute a guide book. The 
feast of which we also wish to partake, you point us to, 
but do not set before us. It has been acutely remarked 
that critics sometimes “‘use works of art only as a stimulus 
to their memories of related objects.”’ Their minds are 
so full of relations that they are incapable of apprehend- 
ing the things between which the relations subsist. Third, 
supposing your opinion infallible, and the feast partaken, 
are there no other viands of the spirit spread on other 
tables? Toward these your words of indirect dispraise 
do not invite us; they rather disillusion us about them. 
When you call one stage of art still imperfect, or another 
past its prime, we are vexed with the question — “What 
more?’? — when you call another the highest, with the 
equally disappointing query — “Is this all?”’ M. Dorchain 
permits himself two comparative judgments, neither re- 
ferring to other poetry generally, but to specific lines of 
his own composition. In the transposed first line and the 
lengthened sixth line he gives us the materials for a judg- 
ment, and asks us to render it for ourselves. This method 
escapes all three of the faults of the customary statistical 
procedure. It does not claim infallibility; it minutely de- 
scribes the particular merits it claims; and the lines dis- 
praised are not the work of another poet, but inventions 
for the occasion as corpora vilia of comparison. 

Another pitfall of artistic exposition is wholly avoided 
by M. Dorchain. The docent must not fancy it any duty 
of his to teach the laws of beauty. In so doing he would 
commit a psychological solecism of the first order. A dis- 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 303 


ciple may easily think that if he only knew the general 
principles according to which certain things give pleasure 
he would be armed to perceive their beauty; and a docent 
may be inclined to ask of what else can a course of prep- 
aration for the enjoyment of a work of art consist than 
a discourse upon the laws of beauty as exemplified therein. 
Yet nothing could be more useless and in fact prejudicial 
to the docent aim. It is useless because there is no causal 
connection whatever between abstractions and the phe- 
nomena they collate. To inculcate a mental law does 
nothing to bring about its fulfilment. What fulfils it is the 
presence in the mind of the causes whose effect the law 
formulates. Does it help us see jokes to learn that the 
phenomenon of the ludicrous is due to a datum unexpected 
under a certain interpretation of circumstances which 
prove to have another interpretation in which the datum 
becomes expected? Yet this is the content of theories of 
the Comic. In the instance of beautiful things, it is the 
apprehension of those aspects of them that give pleasure 
which furnishes the why of the beauty of the work to us. 
The generalization itself according to which they do so 
has no such power, and our ignorance of it will be no handi- 
cap to our enjoyment. A knowledge of it, on the con- 
trary, will be such a handicap. It calls the mind away 
from the concrete object, the bearer of the artist’s thought, 

to a region of abstract and colorless idea in which he has 
_ had no part, and in which if we wish to follow him we will 
take no part. In M. Dorchain’s exposition, as was to be 
expected, the enunciation of laws of beauty is conspicu- 
_ ous by its absence. 

The chief positive factor in effective exposition is the 
labor of directing the disciple’s attention upon vital ele- 
ments in a work of art, of insuring that it is really per- 
ceived in detail, and taken in in its entirety. Equally 


304 MUSEUM IDEALS 


important in a negative way, and in practice naturally 
mingled with it, is the labor of clearing away difficulties 
of comprehension. 

Victor Hugo’s lines are so plain that M. Dorchain has 
almost no difficulties to elucidate. Without him we might 
possibly have mistaken or ignored the reference to brighter 
and fainter stars in the ‘“‘a voix haute, ad voix basse,” but 
all else is clear and we are left to ourselves to understand 
it. In most other poems there would be far more to ex- 
plain, and in many there would be insoluble enigmas. It 
is hardly too much to say that the first contact of any one 
with any museum object — any picture, any statue, any 
fragment of architecture, any product of minor art — 
has its share of the disagreeable state of mind we call be- 
wilderment. To be bewildered over a thing is to make 
unsuccessful attempts to understand it, and here as every- 
where ill-success is not a pleasure but a pain, lighter or 
severer as the case may be. Bewilderment continued be- 
comes more and more a load on the spirits. Failure to 
understand one feature after another in the work we are 
inspecting first produces boredom and then exasperation 
with it — both of them moods which are to the creative 
joy of the artist as oil is to water. It is the business of the 
docent to prevent this untoward outcome at all hazards; 
but as evil is always best overcome with good, the negative 

effort will not be a labor by itself, but a by-product of the 
~ labor of stating the right interpretations at once and before 
they can be missed by the disciple. The main task of the 
docent is therefore an interpretation which shall at the 
same time be an explanation. | 

His general method will consist, as M. Dorchain’s does, 
in going over the work of art in detail and in review, and 
making sure that it is thoroughly apprehended as the 
artist would have it, both by eye and mind. This ideal is 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 305 


rarely even approached. Why are not Michel Angelo’s 
expressions of the fop in his statue of Adonis and the sot 
in his statue of Bacchus matters of common remark? Be- 
cause students of him do not look at his works. The 
docent is one to whom “‘the visible world exists,”’ as it did 
to Théophile Gautier; and who seeks to make it exist to 
others. By a convenient distinction the purpose of an 
artist may be divided into a sensuous and an imagina- 
tive intention. He may mainly, or wholly, aim to give 
the beholder certain sensations in a certain arrangement, 
to which may be added almost invariably the emotional 
mood which these sensations awaken. Or he may mainly, 
though never wholly, care to impart the inferences which 
are naturally drawn from the forms and colors which 
make up his work as an object of sense. The first alterna- 
tive is that of direct, or free beauty, of which the cardinal 
exemplar is music; the second, indirect or representative 
beauty, of which the cardinal exemplar is literature. The 
direct element is essential also to belles lettres, especially 
to poetry, as the preamble to M. Dorchain’s exposition 
indicates. In the objective arts — alone represented in 
a museum — the elements of sense and imagination are 
more nearly equalized, one or the other predominating as 
the artist’s temper dictates. Whistler’s ‘““Nocturnes”’ and 
*Arrangements”’ illustrate in painting the gravitation 
toward musical structure which Walter Pater finds in all 
the fine arts.! Interpretation by a docent will therefore 
not aim exclusively, or even in many cases mainly at mak- 

1 Yet his art inevitably went further. “‘It is true again that Mr. Whistler’s 
own merest ‘ Arrangements’ in color are lovely and effective: but his portraits, 
to speak of them alone, are liable to the damning and intolerable imputation of 
possessing, not merely other qualities than these, but qualities which actually 
appeal —I blush to remember and I shudder to record it — which actually 
appeal to the intelligence and the emotions, to the mind and heart of the spec- 


tator.” A.C. Swinburne, “Mr. Whistler’s Lecture on Art,” Fortnightly Review, 
June, 1888. 


306 MUSEUM IDEALS 


ing plain to a disciple the so-called “story” of the picture 
or the statue. But he will include both elements if he take 
care to see that every vital line and surface and shadow 
and tint is at least perceived by the disciple; and shall be 
understood as well, if he divine an intention in the artist 
going beyond the sense impression to its imaginative 
fruit. He must say not only “‘the shadows gather here” 
or “‘every tone in the picture is reddened” but “‘an endless 
plain stretches beyond, with occasional glimpses of the 
sea’; or “the saint is Catherine and the wheel a symbol 
of her martyrdom.” By this guidance the burden of be- 
wilderment will be lifted, and the work of art seen with that 
degree of minuteness, breadth, and deliberation through 
which alone it can yield its impression, and which, never- 
theless, is habitually denied it even by those who aspire 
to speak and write. Thus only are works of art both rec- 
ommended and taught. The disciple grows into the other 
half of the incomplete being we call an artist; and by his 
beholding gives the work a new lease of life in another 
spirit. 

The experience of docent work in a museum suggests 
three practical rules. The essential office of the docent is 
to get the object thoroughly perceived by the disciple. 
Hence, draw attention to the object first; talk about it 
afterwards, and only if occasion offers. In the words of 
Francois Coppée, ! “Voir d’abord; ensuite, savoir’’; else 
your auditor’s attention will be divided between trying 
to decipher the object and trying to follow you. Again, 
the admiration of the docent is like the latent fire of a 
match, imprisoned in his head, and not effective without 
an interlocutor as igniting surface, and even an auditor 
beside as tinder. When these are seen to in advance, there 
will nearly always be an extended blaze. Hence, let the 


1 Souvenirs d’un Parisien. 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 307 


docent of a group provide himself at the start with a ques- 
tioner (to be kept within bounds) and a hearer. Again, 
a formal talk upon a work of art may to advantage be 
repeated, but only up to the point at which further repe- 
tition does not improve it. This point will be reached 
after not very many repetitions. Stendhal has some- 
where written that seventeen was about the number of 
times that one could see a picture before it began to lose 
its effect. Perhaps we may be said to know a work of 
tangible art well when on closing the eyes we can repro- 
duce it in some detail in imagination. 


The official recognition by museums of the duty of oral 
instruction upon their contents dates from very recent 
years. The initiative was taken by a museum of art. In 
Boston, in 1895, the interpretation of museum exhibits by 
museum officers was under consideration at the Museum 
of Fine Arts. Expert guidance in the galleries had already 
been privately advocated. In the following year, 1896, the 
Trustees consented that volunteer representatives of the 
Twentieth Century Club of that city should meet visitors 
in the galleries of casts to give information about the 
reproductions of sculpture shown. The experiment was 
carried on for three months under the supervision of an 
officer of the Museum, who reported to the Trustees rec- 
ommending that if continued the service be made official. 
For ten years this was impossible. The studies and plans 
for the new building of the Museum fully absorbed the 
energies of the administration. In June, 1906, the Mu- 
seum Bulletin at last announced the project, and applied 

1 Mr. J. Randolph Coolidge, Jr., a Trustee of the Museum since 1899, and 
during 1906 its Director, proposed the plan to a friend in a letter written in 
1892. Since the official adoption of the method by the Boston Museum, Mr. 


Coolidge has contributed materially to its success by his personal codperation 
as docent. 


308 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the forgotten English adjective “docent”’ to the future 
duty. Meanwhile a similar effort had been undertaken by 
volunteers at the Louvre in Paris. In remarking upon it in 
December, 1901, the “‘ Chronique des Arts” suggested that 
officers of the museum should conduct the instruction. 
“Thus the public would learn to see better, and to com- 
prehend better, from those to whom long familiarity and 
laborious achievement have given the privilege of be- 
coming the intimate friends of our masterpieces.’ Two 
years later, in September, 1903, the Mannheim Confer- 
ence of Museum Officials received a number of reports upon 
like volunteer movements in German museums. Finally, 
in April, 1907, gallery instruction was made an official 
function at the Boston Museum. The Bulletin of that 
date announced that an assistant in the administration 
had been appointed, under the title of “‘docent,” tothe 
additional duty of giving visitors in the galleries informa- 
tion about the exhibits. Similar appointments with the 
name of “‘museum instructor” followed within a year or 
two at two museums in New York, one a museum of sci- 
ence — the American Museum of Natural History — the 
other a museum of art — the Metropolitan. The oppor- 
tunity of service was welcomed by other museums through- 
out the country, and the new word “‘docent”’ has since 
become widely accepted among us in the new sense of an 
official commentator on things shown. A docent is one who 
explains exhibits. From the beginning this term has signi- 
fied not an official post but an official duty; not a func- 
tionary but a function. All of the officers of the Boston 
Museum, most of their assistants, and many friends have 
taken part in the service in the ten years since it was 
begun. In England, in pursuance of a suggestion offered 
in 1910 by Lord Sudeley, an official “guide demon- 
strator’’ was in 1911 appointed at the British Museum, 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 309 


and the system was later under consideration at the Na- 
tional Gallery and other museums of art in London. Pro- 
fessor Réau, in France, writes that it is their “constant 
attention to popular education that forms the chief orig- 
inality of American art museums,” the official recogni- 
tion of the duty “being almost unknown in the museums 
of France and Germany.”! It would be vain to hope, 
he writes again, that the words of a docent, ‘‘ however 
eloquent, could transmit a sense of beauty to those who 
have not been endowed with it. But he will be able, in 
analyzing a work of art, to train the eyes of the people, 
and teach them to see better.’”? | 

In American museums of art, gallery instruction is one 
factor in a widespread recent movement for their utiliza- 
tion for educational purposes. Luther is credited with com- 
paring public opinion to a drunken peasant on horseback. 
Righted on one side it falls toward the other. The rude 
comparison has an aptness illustrated once more in the 
history of museum economy. Museums of fine art began 
by subordinating their réle of showing to their réle of 
keeping, their monstrant to their gardant office. This was 
the magazine era of museums, when they were built and 
arranged with chief reference to the preservation of their 
contents. These were the days of closely restricted access, 
of crowded rooms and walls, of great cases with multi- 
farious contents, both arranged in each other’s way, of 
light openings insufficient and dazzling. In large measure 
awakened since to the absurdity of this shortsightedness, 
museums have inclined toward the other possibility of 
error: that of subordinating their réle of showing to their 
role of teaching, their monstrant to their docent office. To 


1 “T Organization des Musées. Les Musées Américains,” Revue de Synthése 
Historique. (1909.) 

2 “Musées Américains,’’ Le Chronique des Arts (December 24, 1910), no. 39, 
p. 308. 


310 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the magazine era has succeeded — notably in this coun- 
try —a school era, when museums of art are managed 
with conspicuous reference, if not chief reference, to in- 
struction by means of their contents. This is the day of 
the employment of public collections as apparatus in 
school and college courses, of omnipresent and obtrusive 
labels, of the obstruction of galleries by copyists and by 
classes under preceptors, of lecture-rooms and classrooms, 
and of detailed programmes for their use timed to the 
educational year. The museum of fine art is greeted, in 
words likewise applicable and likewise inappropriate to 
the church, as “‘the crown of our educational system.” 
An end will come in time to this opposite and equally 
absurd shortsightedness. The primary aim of exhibitions 
of art is to bring it about that certain artistic intentions 
shall be apprehended by the spectator of the objects 
fashioned to embody them. The conservation of the ob- 
jects and the instruction of the spectator are subsidiary to 
this purpose; their simple display to him in part accom- 
plishes it. A museum preserves its contents in order that 
they may be taken in by eye and mind; and instructs upon 
them in order that when shown to the eye they may be 
grasped by the mind. Should it install its contents even 
to their hurt and without commentary, it would still in 
a measure attain its purpose; while if it kept them never 
so safely and interpreted them never so wisely without 
ever letting them be seen, it would wholly fail in its aim. 
The museum gardant and the museum docent are means; 
the museum monstrant an end. 

The beginnings of a natural treatment of public exhi- 
bitions of fine art may be descried in the subordination 
by museums of the aims of safe and compact stowage and 
of didactic effectiveness to the aim of display. When they 
install fewer objects at once, in more congenial surround- 


THE MUSEUM DOCENT 311 


ings, with a greater regard for the limitations of the human 
sight and muscles; when they give a less conspicuous 
place to labels and other machinery of teaching and rec- 
ognize that the proper educational office of a museum of 
art is instruction toward and not from exhibits, and the 
paramount interests in their keeping those of the adult 
public, the three functions, gardant, monstrant, and docent, 
will at length take on their definitive status. 


I 


DOCENT SERVICE AT THE BOSTON ART 
MUSEUM } 

Tue day has long gone by when a librarian could ex- 
claim with glee, as a librarian of the old school is said to 
have done: “All the books are in to-night except two, and 
I am going over to get those.”’ Likewise, the day is pass- 
ing when the accumulations of museums will be accepted 
as a measure of their success. They will be asked what 
they are doing to make their accumulations tell on the 
community. | 

Years ago, the late President Gilman of the Johns Hop- 
kins University made in conversation the suggestion that 
public libraries should invite representative men in vari- 
ous walks of life to be present at stated times in the library 
to help all comers to a knowledge of books in their vari- 
ous specialties. Art museums offer a similar opportunity. 
The pulpit has long ceased, even in our New England 
communities, to be the all-sufficient source of light and 
leading. Meanwhile, all classes of the community, church- 
goers and non-church-goers alike, have won leisure to 
devote to literature and art. Why should they not gather 
in libraries and museums to hear works of literature and 
art commented upon by those who know and love these 
things? In the spring of 1907, this suggestion of a quar- 
ter century before was put into practice in Boston. The 
Museum Bulletin announced that one of the assistants at 
the Museum had been assigned, with the title of “do- 
cent,” to the duty of meeting visitors in the galleries and 
giving information about the exhibits. The service has 

1 Reprinted from The Nation (New York), September 1, 1910. 


DOCENT SERVICE AT BOSTON 313 


grown from this beginning until it now occupies several 
of the staff during parts of every week day, and, with the 
aid of speakers from outside the Museum, has been ex- 
tended to Sunday also. 

The one great interest present to all hearers alike, the 
one difficult thing to comprehend, is the faraway source 
of the objects before them. This deep and singular im- 
pression on almost every attentive beholder is due to 
nothing that a docent can say, but to the work itself, 
which thereby prepares to make itself understood. A 
sense of beauty is as impossible to convey by word of 
mouth as a change of heart. Indeed, as Professor Réau has 
just written: “‘Must we not be en état de grace (subjects 
of grace as the English theologians would say) in order 
to understand a work of art?” In the words of Jacob 
Burckhardt, a docent does not seek to “‘point out the 
fundamental idea or conception of a work of art. Were it 
possible to give this completely in words at all, art would 
be superfluous and the work might have remained un- 
built, unchiselled, and unpainted.’ The aim of a docent 
is “to sketch outlines which the beholder’s own percep- 
tions can quicken into life.”’ 

Of course, there are many visitors who turn away list- 
lessly. And of those who stay and who return, by no 
means all may be really the gainers. Many may be at- 
tracted by the novelty or by an idle pleasure in something 
going on. One sometimes comes back from a tour of the 
galleries with the doubt whether, after all, it is possible to 
make a museum of fine art in any vital sense a popular 
institution. Does not the after-world for past civilizations 
consist only of fewer and fewer learned men? Are mu- 
seums, then, doing the general public any real service 
when they collect objects out of date with the intention of 
allowing them to become more so? 


314 MUSEUM IDEALS 


Against so formidable a doubt, the only safety is an 
appeal to facts. We must seek actual observation as to the 
capacity of men in general to get good out of the remains 
of bygone art. We know that the museum is a favorite 
weekly resort for all classes. What more can it do to help 
all its visitors to that share in the life of the imagination 
which is every one’s birthright? That it can do much more 
seems not unlikely. 

But at once other doubts arise. We are told that talk 
about the subjects of pictures and statues, and upon the 
men and times that produced them, does not elevate, but 
flatters, the public taste. Let it be replied frankly that this 
opinion is due to defective esthetics and an altogether 
mistaken psychology. Defective esthetics, because the 
subject of a work of art unquestionably is a part of its 
artistic content; else a painting of an ash-heap might rival 
a portrait in artistic rank. The fifteenth-century Italians 
who knew something of fine art in practice, however un- 
mindful of its theory, had no other word than stories 
(istorie) for the sculptured reliefs that have since been 
the admiration of the world. Mistaken psychologically, 
because to disapprove of using the historical interest of 
works of art as a help to their appreciation is to ignore the 
preéminent value of indirect mental access. Every nurs- 
ery teaches that there is many a true and needed word 
that can be spoken only in jest. In diplomacy what has 
not the salon wrought, and in business the smoking-room 
and the yachting party? Every astronomer knows that 
fainter objects of the sky can be seen only if the eye is 
directed a little aside. So it is with the more delicate 
factors with which the artist works. While a historical 
memory is building itself up in the mind of the hearer, 
is not his eye opened to the forms and proportions, the 
balance, and the harmony before him? And will not his © 


DOCENT SERVICE AT BOSTON 315 


attention take in these elements quite as well if thus held 
near as it would if turned directly upon them? 

Docent service has been organized at the Boston Museum 
to meet the common experience of travellers. Any one who 
has ever looked at a picture or a statue in the company of 
an appreciative friend knows how much the comprehen- * 
sion of it can be aided by the communication of another’s 
interest and information. Tennyson’s lines express the 
idea: 

And what delights can equal those 
That stir the spirit’s inner depths 
When one that loves, but knows not, reaps 
A truth from one who loves and knows. 
But, on the other hand, every one who has visited places 
of interest like Warwick Castle, where the “h’inlaid 
h’arms is very beautiful,” or the tombs of the Scaligers 
described by Anstey’s amusing Italian as “‘very grazioso, 
molto magnifique, joli conservé,’ knows also what un- 
utterable weariness results from the companionship of 
most professional guides. The Italian word “cicerone’’ — 
as full of words as Cicero himself — expresses the tedium 
of generations of travellers. Granting that it is fatal to 
make an exclusive business of talking about art, neverthe- 
less it remains true that those who have already made 
friends with works of art may profitably be asked to de- 
vote a fraction of their time in introducing others to the 
same friendship. This is what has been done at the Bos- 
ton Museum. A docent is a companion among works of 
art, but he is also not a companion by profession. Docent 
service is a new function of museum officials and other . 
interested persons, not a new office in museums. That 
those invited to this duty should be otherwise employed 
during much the greater part of their time is its cardinal 
feature. A museum of art is full of voices worthy to be 
listened to, but as the deaf are often helped by other 


316 MUSEUM IDEALS 


sounds, so we who wander through museum galleries often 
hear the silent utterances around us only when a living 
voice makes them audible. In every museum of fine art the 
pulpit and the texts are ready, and the hearers await the 
speaker. 


III 
THE PROBLEM OF THE LABEL?! 


Tue problem of the label is a particular case of the gen- 
eral museum problem of conveniently associating infor- 
mation with objects shown. 

To merit a place in a museum an object must have in- 
terest either for its own sake or for what it teaches. Ac- 
cording as a museum treats its contents primarily as 
treasures or primarily as teaching material, it belongs to 
one or the other of two classes, which may be called re- 
spectively the perceptive and the reflective. Museums of 
art exemplify the perceptive type; museums of science 
the reflective type. Both need to associate information 
with objects shown; but the museum of art does so pri- 
marily in order to foster a love of the particular concrete 
things it contains, the museum of science primarily in order 
to promote a knowledge of abstractions they illustrate. 
The contents of the one are sights, of the other signs. The 
problem of the label differs in importance accordingly in 
the two kinds of museum. Jn the museum of art the label 
is a means tothe end of enjoying the treasure it accompa- 
nies; in the museum of science it represents the end of 
instruction for which the accompanying teaching material 
has been gathered. In the museum of art the problem 
of the label touches indirectly, in the museum of science 
immediately upon the ultimate purpose of the institution. 

In the following discussion the problem will be con- 
sidered only in so far as it relates to museums of art. Such 
is the museum in which we stand, whose governing body 


1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 
vol. v. (1911.) 


318 MUSEUM IDEALS 


has declared that “it is to be what its name indicates — 
a museum of the fine arts; that its primary purpose is to 
gather and show the best obtainable works of genius and 
skill; that the application of its contents to industry and 
their illustration by archeology are both within its scope, 
but that neither of them is its first object.” This state- 
ment defines the perceptive museum. Accordingly, the 
association of object and information which we shall here 
consider is one in which the information is offered pri- 
marily for the sake of the object. We shall touch only 
upon what may be called the art side of the label prob- 
lem, remembering that for museums of science the 
problem is a different and more fundamental one. 

Information may be of two kinds — spoken and 
written. : 

Spoken information demands a speaker, and is there- ~ 
fore difficult to arrange for. Nevertheless, let a play on 
words help us remember that the best possible label is 
labial; heard not read. President Garfield’s idea of a 
university — a log with Mark Hopkins at the other end 
—- has its application to the search after information gen- 
erally. But the Mark Hopkinses are oftenest not to be 
found and the log is oftenest not at hand. 

Written information remains. On or near a work of art 
and confined to the four chief questions about it — what, 
who, when, and where — it is called a “ label.” 

The immediate value to a visitor of answers to these 
four questions is twofold; first, a negative value, that of 
relief from bewilderment over the work — in other words, 
the satisfaction of his chief curiosities about it; second, a 
positive value, that of the deepening of his impression 
from the work by all that he already knows about its sub- 
ject, artist, time, and provenience. Incidentally, more- 
over, the four w’s provide him with a name to know the 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 319 


work by; and ultimately, also, the memory of the work 
is vivified by what the visitor may hereafter learn about 
these matters; and vice versa. 

The advantage of displaying the answers on a printed 
form affixed to the object is that the visitor receives them 
in pursuance of his sight-seeing. This advantage is often 
thought indispensable. It is assumed that most sight-seers 
would rather know nothing about what they are looking 
at than take any further trouble to find out about it. Such 
an opinion is nevertheless a patent blunder disproved in 
the experience of every traveller. What information about 
sights abroad has any one ever gained from reading super- 
scriptions upon them compared to what he has labored to 
carry away by reading guidebooks about them? Instead 
of being unwilling to turn away froma sight tolearn about 
it, travellers are only too willing to do so. The inatten- 
tion of the modern man to the visible world is a portentous 
cloud on the future of the objective arts generally. The 
supposed popular alternative — label or nothing — is a 
pseudo-dilemma. If fuller information is accessible, even 
at greater trouble, sight-seers who accept any will often 
prefer it. The label is not a necessary factor in exhibition, 
but an occasional convenience only. 

The limited sphere of the label in the machinery of show 
becomes evident in considering its disadvantages. 

These are at least sevenfold. First, the label is often 
unavailable. In a collection of small objects the descrip- 
tion, maker, date, and source of some may have to go un- | 
specified therewith for lack of convenient space. The 
complete labelling of any miscellaneous collection of ex- 
hibits may be said to be in general a physical impracti- 
cability. 

Second, it is unsightly. Unlike an inscription, which is 
composed with the object, a superscription is in general 


320 MUSEUM IDEALS 


an unharmonious addition thereto, and unless staring is 
apt to be illegible. All are agreed as to this. 

Third, it is impertinent. It reflects on the object by 
proclaiming it unknown and on the beholder by proclaim- 
ing him ignorant. 

Some one has suggested that it would facilitate matters 
at public gatherings if all the dignitaries present should 
wear breastplates with their names and other personal 
particulars distinctly engraved thereon. All comers would 
then know at once whom they were looking at and would 
gain immensely more from the occasion. The suggestion 
has never been taken up, doubtless for two reasons. Every 
one would feel that distinguished individualities would 
lose in personal dignity by becoming pegs on which to hang 
information about themselves, while those who came to 
greet them as familiar and honored friends would resent 
the offer of a table of facts about them as an intrusive 
annoyance. 

The case is similar with works of fine art. These, too, 
are distinguished individualities — impersonal and im- 
mortal, it is true. A ticket or label does not honor, but 
rather humiliates, them, and when they become familiar 
to us is a hindrance to friendly relations. The fact be- 
comes evident on considering limiting cases. The words 
“St. Paul’s Cathedral” carved on an architrave of that 
church or displayed in electric letters about its dome; the 
words “The Capitol”’ similarly placed on the structure in 
Washington would be generally thought to derogate from 
the unique dignity of those buildings; and most sight-seers 
would doubtless resent the implication that they needed 
the information. Likewise, the labelling of museum treas- 
ures will be felt as a double impertinence in proportion as 
that acquaintance with its contents grows which every 
museum is founded to conserve and foster. 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 321 


Fourth, it is fatiguing. Reading labels, far from being 
no trouble, is generally a severe exertion. It adds so greatly 
to the labor of a museum visit that those visitors who con- 
scientiously attend to a few labels are apt thereafter to 
be capable of little more than passing glances at anything. 

Fifth, it is unsatisfactory. The description, author, 
place, and time given in a label are for the most part little 
more than names to the visitor, often soon to be forgotten. 

Sixth, it is atrophying to the perceptions. The easy 
satisfaction of the four uppermost questions about a mu- 
seum object dulls interest in it, and confirms the habitude 
of treating things made to be looked at as if they were made 
to be read about. This is greatly to the beholder’s loss; 
for, as a jewel to its case, so is observing a work of art 
to reading about it. 

Seventh, it is misleading. We often cannot tell the close 
truth on a label without making it impracticably cum- 
bersome. A proportion are forced to perpetuate misin- 
formation. Again, a label emphasizes that part of the 
content of the object which is describable in words — its 
motive or use — to the exclusion of the rest of its content 
—always more important. The difficulty of directing 
the attention of a spectator to the fundamental idea of a 
work of art is known to all artists. Was it not Whistler 
who covered with paint some absorbing detail in a picture 
in order that his general purpose in its color and signifi- 
cance should not escape the eye? Of the novel of “ J/a- 
dame Bovary,”’ Flaubert is reported to have said: “People 
always harp on the ‘coté vaudeville’ of the story, while 
all that I sought to create was ‘quelque chose de gris’”? — 
meaning that any other plot and setting of the same 
melancholy tone would have served his purpose as well. 
The fault lay with the label of the tale, which indicated 
the fortunes of a woman as its principal interest. At the 


322 MUSEUM IDEALS 


name ‘“‘St. George” under the well-known statue, the 
fancy loses itself in the Asian legend, forgetting the young 
soldier of the Florentine streets that Donatello trans- 
ported from life to immortality. In a word, a label, while 
it may be a charming ornament to a work of art — wit- 
ness the title, “It Never Can Happen Again” —and a 
convenience to remember it by, always fails to express and 
generally tends to obscure its content. 

These disadvantages suggest seeking substitutes for 
labels. A docent is the best, as has been said, but in gen- 
eral written information must suffice. The problem of the 
label, then, becomes that of connecting a given object 
with given written information otherwise than by affixing 
the writing to the object. 

What are the possibilities of the case? 

By “connecting the written information with the ob- 
ject” is meant making it possible and easy for the specta- 
tor of the object to find the writing referring to it. When 
the writing is a label, that is, when it is immediately jux- 
taposed with the object, the spectator cannot go astray; 
but when it is not on or near the object, he must in some 
way be directed to it. 

1. A general description and location of the object will 
suffice and is often used in guidebooks. The words “In 
the Lady Chapel, the Altarpiece,” will enable the sight- 
seer to apply the added information, “by Rubens, rep- 
resents the martyrdom of St. Stephen,” infallibly to the 
right object. But such a verbal link is always cumbrous, 
and becomes impracticably so in a museum. 

2. A pictorial link is much more effective. The visitor 
may be provided with a page or pages of. illustrations 
of what he is to see; and these pages may bear the ap- 
propriate information. But how connect the separate 
items each with its respective illustration? Either (a) by 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 323 


printing each thereon or thereunder, labelling, as it were, 
the illustration instead of the object; or (6) by printing the 
items together and the illustrations together and refer- 
ring each member of one group to the proper member of 
the other group by a common and distinctive sign like a 
number, as in the printed keys that often accompany his- 
torical pictures. 

The first alternative, that of information on or under an 
illustration, is open to none of the objections to which a 
similar item on or under an object is exposed. Being un- 
restricted in matter, it is not properly termed a label. This 
method has only its cumbrousness against it; and in spite 
of this has a wide application. 

The second alternative, that of grouping the illustra- 
tions together and the items together and referring by 
numbers from one to the other group, has the advantage of 
compactness but pays for it by an increase in complexity. 
The chain of direction from the object to the information 
now possesses two links. In the earlier case the spectator 
was led from the object to the illustration by visual rec- 
ognition and from the illustration to the information by 
their juxtaposition, the illustration being the single link. 
By the method of grouping he is led from the object to 
the illustration by visual recognition; from the illustra- 
tion to a number by their juxtaposition in a group of 
plates, and from the number to the information by their 
juxtaposition in a group of texts. The illustration and the 
number are two links in the chain of direction. 

Both these methods are applied in the hosts of books 
called treasuries or monuments of art which the late ad- 
vances in processes of pictorial reproduction have brought 
forth. The illustrations may be faced by a related text 
or may be gathered together as numbered plates and re- 
ferred to from the successive sections of a text, varying 


324 MUSEUM IDEALS 


from a simple index to an elaborate series of disquisitions. 
But such treasuries are apt to be large volumes designed 
for the library and impossible to_use as guides to the orig- 
inal objects they discuss. The method of attaching items 
of information to a series of illustrations has, nevertheless, 
been applied with success in the “‘Handbook” of this 
museum. 

An evident simplification reduces the double chain of 
direction to one link again. Why use illustrations at all? 
Why not number the objects themselves? Evidently in 
many cases, perhaps in all, this will be practicable. The 
process of finding the information appropriate to each then . 
becomes a passage from object to number by juxtaposi- 
tion in the gallery and from number to item by juxta- 
position on the page. The label reappears in the form of a 
number. In this form the seven objections hardly apply. 
A number is (1) generally available as a means of identifi- 
cation; (2) is not conspicuously unsightly; and while (3) it 
still retains a flavor of impertinence; (4) it is not fatiguing 
to read, being simple in form; nor (5) unsatisfying, being 
merely a reference; nor (6) dulling to the perceptions, for 
it does not distract from the object; nor (7) misleading, 
for it reveals nothing. 

This last solution of the problem of the label may be 
called a “gallery book.’’ It consists essentially in group- 
ing the information about exhibits into a numbered series 
of items, the exhibits being numbered to correspond. It 
is as if the labels of an exposition were gathered off the 
walls and out of the cases, replaced by numbers and put 
into book form under corresponding numbers. From an- 
other point of view the gallery book may be regarded as 
a democratization of the customary catalogue. Numbered 
lists corresponding to numbered objects are no longer 
offered for purchase to those who can pay, but for use to 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 325 


any who need them; with certain changes in method and 
form corresponding to this change in destination. 

To the obvious objection that labels gathered from their 
secure position on the walls or in cases and put into the 
hands of the public will soon become defaced, if not illegi- 
ble, the only rejoinder is a provision for their multiplica- 
tion and renewal. This is the first requisite of the democ- 
ratization of the catalogue. Lending catalogues, for such 
they will be, must be prepared in quantity and replaced 
when necessary. 

The second requisite changes the form of the catalogue 
by dividing it into independent sections, each applying to 
one room only or even, it may be, to one case. Gathered 
into a single volume, a collection of items of information 
serves the purposes of one person only; separated into 
many sections, it may be used simultaneously by as many 
visitors. This is essential; for the second real objection to 
gallery books as substitutes for labels is that the informa- 
tion relating to the exhibits becomes thereby accessible 
to far fewer people. True; but it is practicable so to multi- 
_ ply the books in each gallery as to give one to each of as 
many visitors as ever would read the labels in a gallery 
simultaneously. In a great crowd but few either can or will 
do so. 

Apart from these two demands the gallery book may be 
treated and made like a catalogue. It is exempt from the 
limitations of space which make the label unsatisfactory 
and misleading, and with the four w’s can combine any 
other information deemed appropriate. 

Nevertheless, be it said in passing, the text of a gallery 
book will greatly differ, through its democratic and artistic 
purpose, from the text of most exhibition catalogues. 
These are customarily both aristocratic and non-artistic, 
addressed to the few concerned to know about art and not 


326 MUSEUM IDEALS 


to the many demanding to know art itself. The scientific 
and personal gossip which is the staple of catalogues must 
give place in the gallery book, if this is to accomplish its 
task, to information more germane to the content of the 
objects listed. 

Every museum official will be sensible of four benefits 
incidental to the substitution of gallery books for labels: 

First, numbers are necessary on many objects in any 
event, if a museum is to have catalogues. The democra- 
tization of these in the form of gallery books obviates the 
need of lettering exhibits also in order to inform about 
them. 

Second, as personal acknowledgments, placards nam- 
ing the givers or lenders of objects will still need to be at- 
tached to them. In proportion as such placards usurp the 
place of labels, the acknowledgments they offer will gain 
in distinction. Visitors will moreover learn not to be dis- 
tracted by them. 

Third, there will be no forgotten labels misplaced, dark- 
ening by time or perpetuating uncorrected data. In a gal- 
lery book the information offered visitors about exhibits 
would be continually under the eye of employees. Its 
physical condition would be the responsibility of the cus- 
todian of the gallery, and its content would be brought 
immediately to the notice of the curator at least as often 
as the labor of copying changes suggested to the clerk to 
ask the question whether it was not time for a new list. 

Fourth, the gallery books of the museum at any given 
moment would constitute a complete catalogue of its ex- 
hibits at that moment. The labor of providing this cat- 
alogue would be accomplished in the course of installing 
objects, and the list would be kept up to date in the daily 
course of changes of exhibition. At any time the prepara- 
tion of copy for a complete printed catalogue of the col- 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 327 


lections of the museum would cost only the labor of sup- 
plementing a current set of the gallery books by a list of 
objects at that moment withdrawn from exhibition. 

The reasons given and the experience cited strongly 
recommend gallery books. It may already be claimed that 
they are an essential ‘auxiliary to any system of labelling. 
To what extent they may eventually be made the sub- 
stitute for labels only experience can determine. The 
democratization of the catalogue is too new a device to 
permit of a judgment upon its ultimate sphere. 

But whatever the future of labels in museums of art, it 
may be said with confidence that they will linger in a form 
radically different from that at present common. True 
labels — items of information addressed to a visitor to the 
objects they concern — may be said hardly yet to exist. 
The placards that pass at present for labels are often not 
addressed to a visitor —one who sees— at all; but to a 
student — one who imagines on the basis of a description. 
This fact is made evident by two chief faults of existing 
labels. These are apt to be made up, in greater or less 
measure, of matter which to a visitor is either self-evi- 
dent or incomprehensible. The reason why a small mar- 
ble figure feminine in form and dress is labelled “‘Stat- 
uette of a Woman” — although the diminutive size and 
female type are apparent to every one who can read the 
words — is that this item of information was conceived 
as an entry in a list, the reader of which might not have the 
object before him and would need a general description. 

Likewise, the reason why phrases such as “‘Sistrum 
bearer” and ‘Prix de Rome” appear in labels is that the 
writers had in mind readers of books — persons to whom 
the interpretation of such phrases would conveniently 
offer itself. As they now mostly exist, labels (so-called) 
are clippings from catalogues; at once redundant in the 


328 MUSEUM IDEALS 


presence of objects and barren in the absence of contexts. 
To make of them an independent avenue of information 
about an object before the eyes they must be revised in 
accordance with the rule: Put nothing in a label either evi- 
dent without rt or incomprehensible without further informa- 
tion; for vt will fail to enlighten the public alike in offering 
what all able to read can see for themselves; and in offering 
what rt demands special knowledge to understand. | 

Judged by this rule a sorry minimum of vis educatrix 
would be revealed in many of the placards ostensibly 
illuminating the public regarding the exhibits of our mu- 
seums of art. The label as it is is far more inferior to the 
gallery book in its instructive efficiency than the label as 
it might be. The needs of him who envisages the object 
are the forgotten criterion. True labels are therefore a 
function, as the mathematicians say, of the special pub- 
lic which each museum serves. Its level of intelligence and 
education determines what should be assumed evident to 
the visitor, or envisager, without words; and what in- 
comprehensible without more words than placards should 
contain. Each museum of art must in future recognize as 
its own independent problem the content of whatever 
labels it chooses to retain. 


These conclusions suggest the following solution of the 
problem of associating printed information with objects 
shown in museums of art: 

(1) Information posted in view of every visitor should 
be restricted to signs containing for the most part 
very general descriptions of what he has before him. 
There are two reasons. If a general visitor, he will 
want no more information. If a specially interested 
person, he will be willing to take trouble to get 
more. 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 329 


(2) Signs should be used in the following ways: 

_(a) On the walls of rooms, and on cases or other 
settings for groups of objects, giving a general 
description of what they contain. 

(b) On pedestals or frames of important isolated 
objects. | 

(c) On objects in a setting which do not come 
under the general sign provided for the set- 
ting. 

(d) On objects or groups of objects to indicate the 
giver. In general, such cards of acknowledg- 
ment would be the only signs within a case 
and would gain in prominence from that fact. 
They might be engraved forms like a personal 
card. | 

(3) Signs giving the same kind of information should 
be everywhere similarly placed; so that the visitor 
should always know where to find it; and in par- 
ticular 

the names of rooms and collections above the 

cornice bounding the exhibition zone; 

the numbers, or titles, of objects below the objects; 

the sources of objects, including the names of 

givers or lenders, above the objects (as on the 
upper frame of pictures or cases) or on cards 
among them. 

(4) Signs might be in pale brown lettering upon still 
paler brown background. For convenience in the 
rearrangement of rooms, they may be painted on 
wooden strips and hung in place. 

(5) Detailed information about every exhibit should 
be accessible in every gallery in a book containing 
corresponding entries. These entries should, if 
necessary, be numbered to correspond to numbers 


330 MUSEUM IDEALS 


beneath the objects. Lending copies of this book 
should be provided and may be placed in pockets 
at the doorways of the gallery. 

(6) Numbers should be used in connection with ob- 
jects only in case they cannot easily be identified 
otherwise. In this event, to every exhibit, or group 
of exhibits, demanding separate description in order 
to afford the visitor the most intelligent enjoyment, 
there should be a number affixed, corresponding to 
an entry in the book of the gallery. These numbers 
should be printed in pale brown lettering on still 
paler brown background, the effect of both to be as 
unobtrusive as will leave the numbers legible within 
the distance at which they would commonly be 
read. The numbering should be about one quarter 
inch in height for objects in cases and half an inch 
or more for wall objects. —The numbers should be 
placed below or in front of the centre of the object 
or as near this position as possible. All the num- 
bers in one room should constitute one series. When 
objects are removed, their numbers should show 
blanks in the gallery books, and any new objects 
should be given the empty numbers as far as prac- 
ticable. 


The first gallery that should carry out this plan would 
have the distinction of being the only museum gallery in 
the world in which the ordinary intellectual needs of any 
visitors whatever, whether generally or specially interested, 
would be adequately met. 

These needs are the following: 

For the visitor with only general interests (1) the posi- 
tive need of a general idea as to what is before him; and 
(2) the negative need of exemption from particular in- 


PROBLEM OF THE LABEL 331 


formation both useless and distracting to him. For the 
visitor with special interests (3) detailed information im- 
mediately accessible about every object shown — since 
his special interest may be excited by any. 

All museums without exception conspicuously fail in 
meeting every one of these needs. In all there are many ob- 
jects which are not covered by any general or special sign. 
In all, many detailed signs, or labels, force upon the gen- 
eral visitor information worse than useless to him. In all, 
no information whatever, or no satisfactory information, 
is given in any form regarding a large proportion of the 
exhibits. 

In a gallery furnished with the printed aids here pro- 
posed, there would be no object about which information 
would not be accessible to every visitor who wanted it, 
and there would be no information about any object given 
any visitor who did not need it. The signs and books are 
at once sufficient and necessary; instead of being both 
inadequate and redundant, as labels are invariably. 

On entering such a gallery, the visitor would be informed 
by the high wall sign that the objects are of a certain kind, 
style and period, limiting dates giving a meaning to the 
period names to every visitor. If, with this information 
in mind, he inspects the exhibits, he finds signs connected 
with all objects not described by the wall sign. 

Ii any object whatever in the room excites his special 
interest, he is informed at either doorway that the book 
which is placed there is for his use and contains infor- 
mation about the object at greater or less length. This 
information is given him for the asking in a much more 
detailed way than if it were presented unasked to every 
visitor in labels; and it is given without disfiguring 
the gallery as any thorough and plainly legible labelling 
must do. 


332 MUSEUM IDEALS 


But for the numbers, sometimes inevitable, and here 
inconspicuous by their light color, but not illegible by 
small size; but for an occasional sign on objects outside the 
general content of the room; and but for cards recalling 
the source of the objects, the works of art are installed 
alone without anything to interfere with their effect. 
Apart from these exceptions, the apparatus of information 
is withdrawn to a wall above, case frames or picture frames 
above and below, and into a book to be held in the hand. 
The exhibits are mainly free to produce their designed im- 
pression, and the visitor, while not left without any in- 
formation he may want, is not forced to accept any he does 
not need. 


IV 
GALLERY BOOKS 
WHAT IS A GALLERY BOOK? 


THE gallery book extends the principle of docent serv- 
ice from the spoken to the written word. It forms a type 
of museum literature hitherto untried. It does not aim to 
add to the scientific apparatus of the museum gallery, rep- 
resented by the handbook, the catalogue, and its diminu- 
tive, the label, but to create an artistic apparatus not be- 
fore represented there. It seeks to serve art immediately 
and not through the medium of science; aiming to con- 
tribute to its enjoyment and not to instruction by it. 
Pleasure, not knowledge, is the object sought. 

The novel purpose of the gallery book is emphasized by 
two characteristics in which it differs from gallery litera- 
ture hitherto in use. It differs from a guidebook in naming 
every object shown, and from a catalogue and from most 
labels by omitting items of information unnecessary in the 
presence of the object. 

The gallery book is a fruit of the so-called esthetic 
theory of art museum management. The agitation ten 
years ago, principally in Boston and New York, which set 
a didactic theory in total opposition to an esthetic theory, 
owed its vivacity largely to a misconception of opinion. 
It was erroneously thought that the type of management 
advocated by the esthetes disregarded every educational 
consideration, and that advocated by the pedagogues 
every artistic consideration. As a matter of fact neither 
of the disputants proposed to disregard the claims rep- 
resented by the other. The entire question was one, not 


334 MUSEUM IDEALS 


of choice, but of preference between artistic and educa- 
tional ends. Admitting, as all must, that a public collec- 
tion of art can and should serve both artistic and educa- 
tional purposes, both enjoyment and instruction, which 
of the two purposes should take precedence in case there 
should arise a conflict between them? In a word, which 
is the paramount aim of a museum of art — its raison 
détre ? The didactic party held that instruction by its 
contents is the raison déire of every museum; the 
eesthetic party held that when a museum is restricted by its 
charter to the collection of works of fine art, the enjoyment 
of its contents is its raison d’étre. The esthetic claim was 
based upon the undisputable truth that works of art are 
made, not to be learned from, but to be delighted in. Their 
native purpose to convey a message must be, it was argued, 
the controlling purpose of any institution seeking to pre- 
serve them. 

The didactic theory was a traditional and instinctive 
view; the esthetic theory a new departure, a first result of 
the application of mental effort to the question of art mu- 
seum purposes. From the first, in the interest of their edu- 
cational aims, museums had developed an apparatus of 
labels, catalogues, and handbooks aiding visitors to learn 
from what they see. The esthetic theory at once suggested 
a complementary apparatus in the form of books aiming 
to help the visitors enjoy what they see. The gallery books 
as provided at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston are such 
an apparatus. Like the docents appointed at the museum 
several years before, their purpose is mainly artistic. A 
docent explains exhibits. So does a gallery book explain 
exhibits. The chief object of both is to forward delight in 
things shown. Both are official companions whose fore- 
most function is to aid visitors in grasping what the art- 
ists meant should be seen in their works, not what learned 


GALLERY BOOKS 335 


men have since found out about the works. A clear rec- 
ognition of the distinction between the mainly esthetic 
purpose of the gallery book and the mainly didactic pur- 
pose of previous museum literature is essential to a correct 
valuation of the new device. In particular, the gallery 
book should, as independent literature, be unsatisfac- 
tory reading; the sense of incompleteness left with the 
reader being such as will impel him to turn to the ob- 
jects of which it treats. To compose comment upon works 
of art with this effect in mind, is not an easy task, and 
early attempts can hardly be expected to do more than 
furnish a basis for progressive improvement. 


PREPARATION AND MAINTENANCE OF GALLERY BOOKS 


(1) Tect. | 

It is understood that the literary labor of preparing a 
book for a given gallery will be performed either by one of 
the Department officers or assistants, or, if by the Secre- 
tary of the Museum, will be carried out upon the basis of 
information supplied by the Department and the result 
submitted to the Department for amendment or expan- 
sion. 

The first step is the close inspection of the individual 
exhibits and the taking of notes upon each. This process 
requires in general the removal of objects from the cases 
or shelves and often the aid of a microscope. A study of the 
literature relating to these and similar objects follows, the 
results of both reading and observation being compressed 
into brief notices of the exhibits, singly or grouped as 
occasion demands, with which may be combined a brief 
introduction, or appendix, historical or critical. The aim 
is to leave no single exhibit unremarked upon toward 
whose understanding a remark will aid. Often a number 
of exhibits may be sufficiently remarked upon collectively. 


336 MUSEUM IDEALS 


In case of need, the separate notices are given numbers, 
in which event the process of placing cards bearing num- 
bers (described below) before or below each exhibit is a 
step in the preparation of the book. The individual no- 
tices with their introduction are then typewritten upon 
stencils (described below) ready for manifolding. 


(2) Form. 

The page measures 102 by 62 inches. The paper used 
is of the absorbent kind furnished for mimeographing by 
the Office Appliance Company. The covers are made of 
heavy dark brown cover paper 103 by 7 inches, front and 
back covers being independent sheets. The front cover 
is printed as follows in gold letters: 


CLASSICAL ART 
Fourth Century Room 
GREEK AND ETRUSCAN MIRRORS 


The books used in the galleries contain, below, in a square 
outlined in gold, the words: 


Lending Copy 
Not to be Taken 


From the Room 


‘These words are omitted on copies of the books offered 
for sale at the entrance. Below this: 


Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 


Three corresponding eyelet holes are punched in both 
covers and each page. Soft brown tape a quarter of an 
inch wide is then run through each and tied in the centre 
of the book. This binding permits either the removal of 
any page of the book for rewriting in case of changes of 
exhibition or the addition of new pages. The eyelet holes 
are guarded with Dennison’s cloth patches gummed. The 


GALLERY BOOKS 337 


result is a flatter binding than when metal eyelets are used 
and one better lending itself to changes in the books. The 
letter-press is confined to one side of the page in order to 
halve the labor of rewriting pages in case of change. A 
special advantage of the books would be lost unless they 
could be readily corrected for all changes of exhibition. 


(3) Installation in the galleries. 

For this purpose wooden pockets are provided consisting 
of a rectangular back 117 by 7% inches, of quarter-inch 
stock partly covered by a front 7%} inches high, forming a 
pocket giving one inch of space from front to back in 
order to accommodate several books. A light, dull brown 
card 6% by 44 inches is glued to the centre of the half front 
bearing the words in dark. brown lettering: 


VISITORS ARE INVITED 
TO USE A 
GALLERY BOOK 
PLEASE REPLACE HERE 


On the centre of the back above the half front another 
similar card bears the words: 


THE BOOK 
MAY BE OBTAINED 
ON APPLICATION 
TO THE CUSTODIAN 


This is to make it possible for the custodian to remove the 
books on crowded days when it might be impossible to 
prevent their being stolen in numbers. Every few weeks 
one disappears at the Museum in Boston; nevertheless it 
is desired to keep them at all times available to visitors 
and the plan is being tried. 

Two pockets are assigned to each gallery. They are 


338 MUSEUM IDEALS 


hung from screws fastened four feet three inches from the 
floor on any convenient wall immediately next the en- 
trance to, and the exit from, each gallery. They are pur- 
posely not placed in the doorways in order to avoid doubt 
as to which room they refer to, and yet are hung near the 
doorways so as to be immediately available. The visitor 
can, if he please, take the book at the entrance door and 
leave it at the exit. The custodians are charged with the 
duty of seeing that the books are not taken away and do 
not go astray into pockets where they do not belong. 


(4) Method of revision. 

When any object is withdrawn from exhibition, or 
newly installed, in a gallery provided with books, all the 
books are taken up and delivered with notes of the changes 
to the Secretary of the Museum, who is charged with the 
duty of seeing that the corresponding changes are made in 
the letterpress of the books and in the numbering of ob- 
jects in the galleries; and that the revised books are re- 
turned to the pockets without any avoidable delay. The 
responsibility of keeping all the books in the system up to 
date at all times thus rests on a single officer, who may 
demand any necessary aid to this end from others. The 
total responsibility for the system is divided into three 
definite shares: (1) for the matter of the books, on the 
department officers; (2) for their form, upon the Secre- 
tary of the Museum; (3) for their physical care, upon 
the custodians in the galleries. In a growing or changing 
collection the labor of keeping in gallery books a complete 
and accurate account of the exhibits would be very con- 
siderable, and should be minimized as far as possible. If 
exhibits are numbered to correspond with numbered para- 
graphs in a book, their rearrangement will not interfere 
with its use. When any objects are withdrawn temporarily, 


GALLERY BOOKS 339 


a pencil note may be made in the books; if permanently, 
the corresponding paragraphs may be cancelled in ink. 
When an object is added, the paragraph relating to it may 
be typewritten in duplicate or triplicate and pasted into 
the book at the proper place and also added to the page 
file hereafter described. Books should be rewritten only 
when the changes in them begin to make them hard read- 
ing. The stock of books used to replace copies in the gal- 
leries or kept for sale should consist only of the books as 
originally written, dated to indicate the time when they 
exactly corresponded with the galleries. The labor re- 
quired to keep these reserves also in accord with the cur- 
rent changes in the galleries would not be justified by any 
results in added information to the visitor. 


(5) Apparatus. 

An Edison mimeograph is used in manifolding the books. 
As each page is manifolded, a copy of it is added to a Page 
File of all previous pages written, and is numbered con- 
secutively with them. The purpose of the page file is to 
keep available any information once gathered and put 
into form. To this end the number of each object in the 
registers of the Museum is written next the notice on the 
page of the file and entered in a card index kept in nu- 
merical order. In the registry system of the Museum ob- 
jects are given a double number separated by a decimal, 
one number indicating the year when the object was re- 
ceived, the other its place in the list of accessions for the 
year. In the case of acquisitions, the year number comes 
first; in the case of loans, last. In the card index to the 
page file the two classes of numbers are written on dif- 
ferent colored cards: white for acquisitions and blue for 
loans. Each card is ruled in two double columns of ten 
lines each. The first of the double columns contains the 


340 MUSEUM IDEALS 


registry number, the second the number of the volume and 
page in the page file where the object is recorded. Each 
card, therefore, contains twenty registry numbers. When 
an object is newly installed in a gallery, the note sent in to 
the Secretary with the books to be revised contains the 
registry number of the new object, from which any previ- 
ous notice ever given of the object in any gallery book can 
at once be found. 

For the same end, — that of keeping past work avail- 
able, — the cards of registry numbers in each department 
are preceded in the index by cards containing the titles 
of any introductions or appendices contributed by that 
department to the books, arranged in alphabetical order. 

The page file is kept in loose-leaf binders containing 
about two hundred pages each and numbered as Volume 
1, 2, etc. The references to the page file from the registry 
cards consist therefore of two numbers, one the volume, 
the other the page. 

As each book is written, it is added to a Current File of 
books. The current file, therefore, corresponds accurately 
at all times to the books as they exist in the galleries. It 
was at first proposed to file and index each stencil; but 
they are so quickly written and so troublesome to use 
again that the plan of preserving them has been given up. 

The gallery books are manifolded in general in editions 
of fifty. Two are placed in each gallery, two at the door 
of the Museum for sale, one in the Department library, 
one in the current file, and the pages of one in the page 
file. The covers of those for sale are dark green and are 
printed without the notice that the book is a lending copy. 
It is found that two months’ use in some cases may soil 
the gallery copies enough to demand replacing them. 

When a book is revised, the copies installed in the gal- 
leries are withdrawn and the revised copies substituted. 


GALLERY BOOKS 341 


The pages changed are added, together with any new 
pages, to the page file, which thus in course of time comes 
to contain many pages in part reproducing each other. 
Books may be discontinued, but as their pages remain in 
the page file, the information gathered about the objects 
they record remains available. That portion of the stock 
of each book which is not immediately used is kept as- 
sembled ready for binding in envelopes to protect it from 
dust. Each of these envelopes is marked with the name of 
the book within: that is, with the Department, the gal- 
lery and the exhibit recorded in the book; and with the 
date when the book was completed. 7 

The numbers used in the galleries are printed in dark 
brown ink on light brown cardboard, three eighths of an 
inch square. These can be laid on shelves or glued to 
mounts or pedestals or mounted on frames. The numbers 
are regarded as a necessary evil of the system, and it has 
proved possible to avoid their use much more often than 
was anticipated. They are unavoidable only in the in- 
stance of a great number of objects not easily distinguished 
by description. It is found that the actual number of 
separate exhibits in one room of average size in a museum 
of fine arts is in general much smaller than would be sup- 
posed. Perhaps two hundred individual exhibits might be 
taken as an extreme limit, and even when there are so 
many, they may be grouped in cases and on shelves so as 
to render numbering unnecessary. When a numbered 
object is removed from exhibition, it is the duty of the 
officer making the change to remove the number with it. 
When an object needing a number is installed, the officer 
indicates with the notice of it the number it should have. 
It is to be noted that the rearrangement of a gallery would 
not necessitate any change in the books, any numbers 
there used following the object. Further, the withdrawal 


342 MUSEUM IDEALS 


of numbered exhibits, while it would cause gaps in the 
numerical series recorded in the books, would still leave 
them in order and not interfere with their convenient use. 

The case may arise that inscriptions or drawings or 
illustrations are necessary or desirable in the books. With 
the aid of the Edison-Dick Mimeoscope, classical or ori- 
ental lettering, plans or any other matter drawn with the 
pen may be inscribed upon the stencils and manifolded 
as perfectly as the typewriting. The addition of such mat- 
ter would in these cases be the last step in preparing the 
books. 


The response of the public to the offer by a museum of 
information about each object it shows cannot yet be 
gauged, but it 1s self-evident, first, that the offer of all- 
inclusive information is the ultimate ideal of any exhibi- 
tion, and further that labels give information so meagre 
as often to be misleading. It would appear that some 
method, akin to that at present attempted in Boston, of 
giving, in the galleries, adequate information about every 
exhibit, will be regarded in the museum of the future as an 
essential requisite of good management. 


Note on the Development of the Plan of Gallery Books. Gal- 
lery books are the outgrowth of a descriptive chart which the 
late Okakura-Kakuzo, Curator of Chinese and Japanese Art at 
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston until his death in 1913, 
provided in 1906, instead of labels, for the exhibits in the Jap- 
anese Cabinet of the old building in Copley Square. The re- 
port of the Department for 1906 states as follows: 


No labels are placed upon any of the objects in the cabinet, but upon the seat 
in the centre of the room are kept several printed or typewritten descriptions 
of the various exhibits, together with a plan of the room showing their location. 


Three years later, workers in the galleries of our new building 
during the summer before it was opened had the rare privilege 
of seeing how museum installations in general look without 
labels. The impression was that of ideal conditions, surely to 


GALLERY BOOKS 343 


be realized in the museum of the future. The objects seemed at 
home with each other and in the halls. In the absence of any 
suggestion that they were charity patients occupying labelled 
beds in wards, they were able to create about themselves a lit- 
tle world of their own, most conducive to their understanding. 

A month before the building was opened, in October, 1909, 
it was suggested to the administration of the Museum that gen- 
eral use should be made of Mr. Okakura’s method throughout 
the galleries, these “ books of the room ”’ to be hung in the door- 
ways as lending copies. During the following year — 1910 — 
a descriptive chart was prepared for the Italian Sculpture in 
the Renaissance Court, which had not yet been labelled. This 
chart was printed in a small edition, a number being kept in 
the Court as lending copies. At the same time, in the Mastaba 
Room of the Egyptian Department, the device was developed 
by Mr. Louis Earle Rowe, at present Director of the Rhode 
Island School of Design, then Assistant in the Department, 
into a “ Gallery Leaflet’? which he described in a paper with 
this title read at the meeting of the American Association of 
Museums June 1, 1910. During the spring of 1911, by adding 
descriptive and critical notes to the chart used in the Renais- 
sance Court it was developed into a gallery book of the form 
since adhered to; and on May 23 the scheme for gallery books 
was described in detail before the American Association of 
Museums in the essay on the “ Problem of the Label ”’ reprinted 
in this volume. 

In the autumn of 1911 it was proposed to prepare and main- 
tain a system of gallery books in any one of the departments 
of the Museum that would offer itself as an experiment station; 
and two years later, in the summer of 1913, the late Okakura- 
Kakuzo accepted the invitation on behalf of the Japanese De- 
partment. Books have been prepared and installed in rapid 
succession since that date. The system was formally adopted 
by the administration of the Museum through a vote passed 
July 15, 1915, placing it in charge of the Secretary. 


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THE IDEAL OF COMPOSITE BOARDS — 
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GOVERNMENT 


THE IDEAL OF COMPOSITE BOARDS — SOME 
GENERAL PROBLEMS 


I 
THE DAY OF THE EXPERT! 


THE papers read before the American Association of 
Museums during the eight years of its life have covered 
a wide range of topics, reaching, one might imagine, the 
whole circle of museum interests. Yet there is one ques- 
tion, antecedent to all others, which has never been asked, 
and but once approached, in your presence. I recall with 
pleasure that the speaker who approached it was our pres- 
ent host and my immediate predecessor in the office of 
president. This is the question: Just what use are all these 
papers? We meet to develop and exchange our ideas; but 
when we separate, what power have we to put into effect 
what we have concluded and learned? We have the voice 
here. How much voice have we at home? 

This question of official scope we share with every simi- 
lar association; and with several it has recently become a 
burning question. Just a year ago there was formed an 
association of university professors for the determination 
and maintenance of professorial rights; and last winter 
the American Political Science Association, and the Philo- 
sophical and Psychological associations appointed com- 
mittees to consider and report upon like matters. 


1 Presidential Address at the Milwaukee-Chicago meeting of the American 
Association of Museums, May, 1914. Reprinted in the Proceedings of the As- 
sociation, vol. vit (1914), and in Science (N. S.), vol. xxxrx, no. 1013 (May 
29, 1914). 


348 MUSEUM IDEALS 


A problem of problems like this offers appropriate mat- 
ter for an initial presidential address; and its simultane- 
ous agitation elsewhere suggests treating it in the broadest 
possible way — as a concern, not of one profession, but of 
all professions. Thus amplified, the topic becomes that 
of the present and future status of the specialist in the 
United States. Far as this theme stretches beyond the 
work of the permanent public exhibitions we call museums, 
the inquiry into the day of the expert is one that vitally 
touches the whole official activity of every museum worker. 

The inquiry naturally divides itself into four: What has 
been the position of the expert among us? What change 
suggests itself? What are the bearings of change? What 
are the prospects of change? 

We shall offer replies to these questions in succession: 
(1) by arguing that the prevailing attitude of institutions 
of the humanities in this country toward their expert em- 
ployees is out of date; (2) by specifying a reform that 
would bring it up to date; (3) by meeting criticisms of the 
new order; and (4) by noting its approach. We shall de- 
scribe an outgrown condition, state and defend an ad- 
justment, and report progress toward it. A glimpse of 
the past will lead to a glimpse of the future. 

By expert will here be meant a person whose achieve- 
ments demand special aptitudes long exercised; and by 
his day a time when these developed abilities are used to 
the best advantage of the community. 

For the expert in this country, to-day, according to fre- 
quent remark, is not such a time; but there are signs that 
to-morrow will be. 

Here and now, the work of the expert is largely carried 
on as a branch of corporate activity. Our men of science, 
pure and applied, our lawyers, doctors, educators, clergy- 
men, social workers, artists and students of art, while they 


+ 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 349 


may practise their specialties alone, very commonly also 
serve some corporation, and in great numbers serve a cor- 
poration exclusively, as do most of us assembled here. 

A corporation is a body of men empowered by the 
State to join in a certain purpose, and held responsible 
for its due fulfilment. At the end of his brief and ham- 
pered career as Premier of England, Lord Rosebery is re- 
ported to have said: “‘Responsibility without power is 
hell.” To be discharged successfully, duty must be coupled 
with corresponding authority. This is the foundation 
principle with which any study of the corporate sphere of 
the expert must begin. A corporation engaging the aid of 
a staff is responsible at once for every detail of their action 
in its service, and for every detail of their outside life, in 
so far as this reacts upon their official activity; and hence 
possesses equivalent rights of control, subject only to law 
and custom. 

Rights of total control presuppose in turn competence 
for total control. To insure it, two methods of selecting 
the membership of a corporation are possible. In giving 
a certain purpose into the sole charge of certain persons, 
regard may be had either to the purpose chiefly, or to the 
persons chiefly; to their special competence, or to their 
general competence. 

In the history of this country, the choice among men of 
the professions concerned was a colonial method; that 
among men of ability, however displayed, has been our 
national method. 

The colonial method was an inheritance from the Old 
World. Leonardo da Vinci is spoken of as the last Eu- 
ropean to take all knowledge for his province. With the 
development of the sciences and the arts after him, even 
men of commanding powers became specialists. Follow- 
ing the example of the mother country, the colonies placed 


350 MUSEUM IDEALS 


their first colleges under the control of educational experts _ 
— in the main their clerics par excellence, or clergymen. 
An interpretation of the charter of Harvard College of 
1636 given later by the colonial legislature, affirmed that 
the corporation was restricted to members of the teach- 
ing force; as the corporations of Oxford and Cambridge © 
in England still are. The charter of Yale College was 
issued in 1701 to ten clergymen, and provided that their 
successors should always be clergymen. 

At the birth of our nation, the emphasis turned from 
purposes to persons, under the compelling force of two 
causes: the parity of our voting citizens and the condi- 
tions of a new national life. 

From the beginning of the new union one man was as 
good as another at the polls. Every vote cast was given 
the same weight. It followed that the recognition of the 
likenesses of men became dominant, and the recognition 
of their differences obscured. Leading men came to be 
thought of as like exponents of the sense and efficiency of 
the community. The acknowledgment of competence took 
the form of an acknowledgment of general competence. 
We of the United States have been nurtured in the belief 
that a man who has distinguished himself in any one di- 
rection will also distinguish himself in any other. 

Our early national experience confirmed the belief at 
every turn. Pioneer conditions bring out the all-round 
man. The solid citizen in a new community is called on 
to be at once a farmer for sustenance, a manufacturer for 
clothing, a builder for shelter, and a soldier for defence; 
often also a lawyer for justice, a doctor for the body, an 
educator for the mind, or a teacher for the soul. The 
nascent civilization of the United States had its Leonardo 
da Vinci in Benjamin Franklin. Nor has our later prog- 
ress yet thoroughly dislodged the ideal of the all-round 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 351 


American, fit for any task. The subjugation of a conti- 
nent is in the main a business matter, and an able man 
may learn a business in all its branches. The practice of 
naming any capable person for any office has maintained 
itself among us because surpassing excellence has not for 
the most part been essential. We have fought successful 
wars with citizen soldiery and grown great in peace with 
practical men as intellectual guides. ‘To Amiel our de- 
mocracy announced an era of mediocrity; Schopenhauer 
called us a nation of plebeians; an Austrian royal visitor 
missed among us the sense of personality — the percep- 
tion of that delicate but real differentiation that makes 
each man himself and no other. This is the mark left 
on the society of the United States by our day of small 
things. 

That day is now past; and it behooves us to examine the 
foundations of the emphasis which our methods of assign- 
ing responsibility impose upon persons instead of upon 
purposes, upon general repute instead of special fitness. 
When examined, our course proves an aberration from 
that of colonial times learned in Europe. We must go 
back upon history; but only to go on to a new social ideal 
which shall square at once with our political creed and our 
existing national conditions. 

First, as to our political creed. The parity of voters 
obscures, but also implies the difference of men’s capac- 
ity. In affirming that persons of a certain sex and reach- 
ing certain mental, moral, and economical standards 
should be counted alike in the process of government, it 
presupposes others who do not possess these qualifications 
and are not to be counted at all. The conception of the 
equal distribution of capacity among men is negatived by 
the political device itself which fostered it. 

It may be asked: What then becomes of the belief that 


352 MUSEUM IDEALS 


men are created equal? If that renowned assertion does 
not mean that one man is as good as another, that all per- 
sons would show like capacity with like opportunity, 
what does it mean? Something totally different. Did it 
claim that every babe new-born might under favorable 
circumstances become what any other may, it would seek 
to persuade us that males might become mothers. In- 
stead of this and other absurdities but little less glaring, 
it proclaims the logical postulate that all real differences 
of human capacity are sensible facts of the present world. 
In Jefferson’s glowing words, the inhabitants of this 
created frame bring none of their disparities with them 
from the invisible. There are no such things as divine 
rights, withdrawn from human scrutiny. The doctrine of 
equality affirms that only those persons who show them- 
selves different should be treated differently. Its motto 
is the Roman challenge “ Aut tace, aut face’’ — in modern 
American “‘Put up or shut up.’ True democracy is sci- 
entific method applied in politics. It accepts as inevitable 
in the political sphere also what Huxley called the great 
tragedy of science, “‘the slaughter of a beautiful theory by 
an ugly fact.”” The belief that a man who has shown ex- 
ceptional powers in any one direction will also show them 
in any other is such a beautiful theory, exposed by our 
political creed to slaughter by ugly facts. Within nar- 
row limits they confirm it. A capable farmer or efficient 
selectman will in all probability prove a good teacher of 
the rule of three, or a good postmaster. Beyond narrow 
limits they disprove it. Probably neither could teach 
Abelian functions well, or manage a wireless station. But 
whether verified or falsified, it is not the generalization 
itself, but the test of it, which is the sum and substance of 
the principle of equality. This is a doctrine of method, 
not a statement of results. It repeats in modern words 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 353 


the ancient injunction: “By their fruits ye shall know 
them.” It is the merit system generalized. Admitting all 
verifiable disparities of human capacity, and excluding 
all mystic disparities, the equality of the Declaration is sim- 
ple common sense. Denying them all indiscriminately, the 
equality of its interpretation is literally nonsense. 

Second, as to our national conditions. They are no 
longer those of pioneer life. The task of leading the civil- 
ization of the United States has ceased to resemble a 
business. No man, however able, can learn it in all its 
branches. Growth, as is its wont, has developed hetero- 
geneity from homogeneity. The arts we now practise have 
become as long as the lives we can devote to them. Our 
farmers, our manufacturers, our builders, our soldiers, 
our lawyers, our doctors, our educators, our religious 
leaders, are now different persons, each given wholly to 
his work. The era of the all-round man has at last gone 
by for us also, as centuries ago it went by for the old 
world. The excellence that comes alone from the long 
exercise of special aptitude is everywhere demanded, and 
the demand is everywhere being met. The era of medioc- 
rity, the nation of plebeians, is on its way to bringing 
forth aristocracies of demonstrated ability, and the sense 
of personality, the recognition of that delicate but real 
differentiation that makes each man himself and no other, 
will not long delay its advent. 

The democracy of individuality, the democracy that 
accepts all proven differences and no other, is the new 
social ideal, squaring at once with the creed of our fathers 
and our own conditions. With our political creed, for the 
doctrine of equality, in denying all supersensible differ- 
ences, stops short at the sensible world. Personality is its 
presupposition. With our national conditions, for the 
all-round man is bested in every line by the exceptional 


354 ; MUSEUM IDEALS 


man in that line, and only the best has become good 
enough for us. The Jack-of-all-trades is master of none, 
and our progress calls for masters everywhere.! Finally, 
the democracy of individuality nrakes for the union in 
which there is strength. The new ideal is not that of a so- 
ciety of persons increasingly like each other, and hence in- 
creasingly sufficient each to himself, but of persons increas- 
ingly different each from the other and hence increasingly 
necessary each to the other. While the Declaration pro- 
claimed our independence of other peoples, it assumed 
our interdependence among ourselves. A citizenship of 
similars is like the sand, composed of particles each as com- 
plete as any and with no tendency to cohere; and a polit- 
ical house built upon it will fall. A citizenship of dissimi- 
lars is like the rock composed of particles supplementing 
and cleaving to each other; and a political house built upon 
it will stand.? 

But we have not yet acquired the courage of our fun- 
damental political conviction, nor yet thoroughly adjusted 
ourselves to our larger life. The administration of col- 
lective enterprises in the United States is at present in a 
state of unstable equilibrium. The question of the cor- 
porate sphere of the expert is not yet settled because not 
yet settled right. 

While the actual fulfilment of corporate purposes has 
in general grown beyond the competence of any but those 
of special aptitude long exercised, our national habit per- 
sists of placing these purposes in charge of men of ability 

1 “We shall never rise to our opportunities in this country and secure a 
proper discharge of the public business until we get over our dislike of experts.” 
Associate Justice Charles E. Hughes, in an address at the Thirty-ninth Annual 
Meeting of the New York State Bar Association, January 14, 1916. 

2 “Democracy must show its capacity for producing, not a higher average 
man, but the highest possible types of manhood in all its manifold varieties, 


or it is a failure.” J. R. Lowell, Harvard Anniversary Address, November 8, 
1886. 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 355 


however displayed. Any conspicuous success, especially 
financial success, opens the way to a position of corporate 
authority. The necessary result is a permissive system 
of control. A corporation among us executes its trust by 
choosing paid assistants of the special ability required, 
and permitting them to carry out its purposes more or less 
in their own way. This situation of power perforce in 
abeyance is one of unstable administrative equilibrium. 
What is permitted can also be forbidden, and may at any 
time be forbidden by an authority alive to its responsi- 
bility and conscious of its power. In this event two rights 
to control come into conflict: the right based on capacity 
and the right based on law. The uncertainty of the situa- 
tion is plain in the case of institutions of the humanities. 
Only an Orientalist can determine what antecedent study 
should be demanded for a course in the Vedas, only a 
technician whether quaternions should be used in teaching 
engineering, only an experimenter when a culture should 
be transferred from sun to shade, only a librarian what 
system of shelf numbering is applicable to fiction, only a 
surgeon how to conduct an operation in tracheotomy, only 
a religious leader to what spiritual exercise to invite a soul 
in need, only a curator how to install an ecological ex- 
hibit or make a collection of prints tell on the public, only 
an alienist how to control melancholia agitans, only a so- 
cial worker how far the same methods of help are fitted to 
Syrians and Chinese. Yet others make up the boards on 
whose responsibility, by whose authority, and at whose 
option such decisions are taken. The permissive system 
settles the question of the corporate sphere of the expert 
but temporarily; leaving competence subject to impo- 
tence. It presents a problem, and one only to be solved by 
the union of the two potentially opposing rights. In the 
end, capacity must be given a legal standing. The skill 


356 MUSEUM IDEALS 


demanded of the employee must be represented among 
the employers. 

In contrast with the permissive system of control, that 
exercised according to this conclusion by a composite board 
may be called the positive system. The terms refer re- 
spectively to the power of veto and the power of fiat. The 
positive system proposes that a corporation shall be con- 
stituted with a competence as all-embracing as its au- 
thority. Concretely and considering charitable founda- 
tions only, it proposes that professors in our colleges and 
technical schools shall be represented among the trustees 
of those institutions, librarians and heads of departments 
among those of libraries, scientific men among those of 
institutions of research, physicians among those of hospi- 
tals, clergymen among those of religious establishments, 
directors and curators among those of museums, social 
workers among those of foundations for popular better- 
ment. In the most general terms it claims that any cor- 
poration should include members embodying in their own 
persons the special types of skill essential in carrying on 
its work. This claim is based on the conditions of perma- 
nent efficiency in collective enterprises. Its recognition 
is growing among us and will one day be general. That 
day will be the day of the expert. 

Such a change in the make-up of corporations in this 
country may be said to round out an organization which 
practical sagacity has already partially developed in 
foundations of private origin and public aim among us. 
The men of general repute which it has been our custom 
to choose for positions of charitable trust have acquired 
by the logic of events their special necessary function in 
the fulfilment of these trusts. This function is that of 
winning support for the institutions they control. In our 
own country more than in any other, corporations not for 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 357 


profit are the fruit of private initiative. The first requisite 
for their establishment and maintenance is the selection of 
a board of trustees whose names, with those of their suc- 
cessors, will be an earnest of coming gifts because a guar- 
antee of their safe and conscientious handling. Before we 
can do anything, we must have something to do with. But 
although ample and assured support is a condition neces- 
sary to the success of an institution, it is not a condition 
sufficient to success. A function equally necessary, and 
with support sufficient, is that of the accomplishment of 
purpose. This is the second and no less exacting half of 
the task; with us overshadowed by the first, because the 
accumulation of our wealth has outrun our provision of 
knowledge and skill to utilize it. The positive system of 
control repairs this omission, now out of date. It supple- 
ments our present provision of means by providing also 
for ends. It would impose the total charge of an institu- 
tion upon a body fitted to bear both halves of it. Neither 
the men of social and financial standing who now compose 
the boards of our charitable institutions, nor the special- 
ists now active in their aid, but now commonly excluded 
from those boards, are equal to the whole duty. Only men 
of affairs are competent to the business management of 
their trust. Only men in comparison withdrawn from the 
public eye in the long exercise of special aptitude are com- 
petent to its professional conduct. The men of means and 
- the men of ends must join forces in order to the best 
achievement of their common purpose. 

The practical application of the principle of control by 
composite boards presents various questions. 

Is the demand that all the different forms of profes- 
sional skill utilized by a corporation shall be represented 
therein an ideal realizable in the instance of large institu- 
tions? Theoretically no; practically yes. All the expert 


358 MUSEUM IDEALS 


ability employed will in a measure be represented by each 
professional member; and by rotation in office among 
them, the recurrent grasp by the board of the affairs of the 
foundation may be extended to minutiz in any degree. 

Again, is it wise to place experts in charge of experts? 
The point may be debated, but is irrelevant. The posi- 
tive system does not propose to do so, but to give them 
a share in controlling others. The question — Who shall 
decide when doctors disagree? — finds its answer when 
another equal authority is present to add considerations 
beyond the scope of either. Such deciding voices are pro- 
vided for in the composite boards contemplated in the 
positive system. Its ideal is that every form of considera- 
tion which enters into the work in hand shall have its 
representative in the body which controls. 

Again, should the experts employed by a charitable 
corporation be eligible thereto, or ought its professional 
membership to be chosen outside? Choice from the staff 
suggests a double doubt. Suppose a superior officer and 
his subordinate chosen; would not their equality on the 
board weaken the administrative control of the superior? 
No; for the equality is that of ultimate authority. The 
superior exercises his control as the delegate of the inferior 
as well as of himself and others. The inferior who dis- 
puted it would question his own right. There is no surer 
means of interesting any one in subordination than to 
give him power. The doubt has another bearing. It also 
reflects the importance of the individual interests at stake 
in the case of employees. Will not their concern for their 
pay as a rule dominate their concern for their work? 

The democracy of similarity says yes. The craving for 
money is the dominating motive in all men at all times. 
The democracy of individuality says no, basing its reply 
on a distinction. As social affairs are now arranged, some 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 359 


money is a perpetual necessity to us all, hardly less inex- 
orable than the air we breathe. Else why should men and 
women still starve among us? But more money Is an in- 
creasing luxury, the desire for which may be outweighed 
by many other interests. The auri sacra fames is an illegit- 
imate child of the hunger for bread. In the case of the 
paid expert in a charitable corporation, some money is 
at most times assured, and motives are at all times present 
capable of tempering the desire for more. There are thus 
two reasons why his interest in his pay will not certainly 
dominate his interest in his work. His salary, while al- 
ways moderate, is within limits safe; and the long exer- 
cise of his special aptitudes is at once fruit and source of 
motives apart from those of gain. The patience with 
which the specialist follows his task is the result of the 
fascinating germinal power of the ideas upon it of which 
his brain is the theatre, and which his hand transfers to 
real life. They may become an efficient anti-toxin for the 
cacoethes habendi. 'Those who have had much to do with 
experts can echo the statement of Renan: “The reason 
why my judgments of human nature are a surprise to 
men of the world is that they have not seen what I have 
seen.” ! To admit a rule by which experts when paid shall 
be excluded from charitable boards is to commit the ab- 
surdity of at once recognizing the exceptional man and 
treating him as if he were like all other men. Other 
grounds of bias, the desires for honor and power, unpaid 
members share with him. The receipt of pay as well will 
not disqualify those worthy of it. 

Again, how are the permissive and the positive sys- 
tems respectively related to the rights of free thought 
and free speech? These universal rights, so-called, are in 
essence duties of men in power. They should see to it 


1 Souvenirs d Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 221. 


360 MUSEUM IDEALS 


that they do not so uphold the social order as to bar its 
advance. While all authority, therefore, is obligated to 
reduce to a minimum its repression of ideas and their 
utterance, no organization of control will absolutely pre- 
vent all danger of too high an interpretation of this mini- 
mum. But a system by which seekers after truth in 
corporate service themselves share in the management 
tends to keep it within bounds. The positive system of 
corporate control thus obviates a danger to freedom in- 
herent in the permissive system. It comes to the aid of 
free thought and free speech, entails a liberation of the 
spiritual forces within a nation. 

The inclusion in charitable boards of men experienced 
in the actual accomplishment of their purposes is not 
new in this country either as a fact or an ideal. Their 
representation, never wholly lacking, is growing, and its 
extension is advocated with authority. 

Frequently, if not commonly, a single chief executive 
officer, the head of the staff, is included in the board of 
trustees. The old ideal of the all-round man lingers in 
this provision, here swollen to impossible proportions. 
The admitted difficulty of finding satisfactory executive 
heads for institutions of the humanities is the sign of an 
unreasonable demand upon human capacity. No single | 
executive, however active and talented, can embody in 
himself various types of modern professional knowledge 
and skill. The due representation of men of ends in any 
considerable corporation will always be a number greater 
than unity. A fair fraction of the board must be se- 
‘lected from their ranks. The demand upon the executive 
is thereby decreased to the manageable portions of a busi- 
ness leadership, either with or without a special professional 
function. 

Specialists have found a place already in a number of 


THE DAY OF THE EXPERT 361 


our scientific and artistic corporations. The charter of a 
noted scientific school, affiliated with a university, stip- 
ulates that of the corporation of nine, one third shall 
always be professors or ex-professors of the school. In 
another institute a larger proportion are persons in imme- 
diate control of the scientific work. No commanding need 
of appeal to the community for financial support existing 
in these cases, the men of ends have taken their natural 
place in the management along with men of means. 
Among museums of art more than one has chosen trus- 
tees from its own working staff and those of neighboring 
institutions. 

In our chief universities, it has become the practice to 
- allow the alumni a large representation in the board of 
trustees. Of the two bodies of persons concerned in the 
actual achievement of the teaching purpose, the teachers 
and the taught, this practice accords to one, the taught, 
its share in ultimate management. The provision sug- 
gests, and may be believed to announce, a second, by 
which the other body, the teachers, will gain a similar 
representation. The class of alumni trustees has for its 
logical complement a class of faculty trustees; a class 
more indispensable to vital university success than their 
predecessors, in that they represent not the subjects but 
the source of university discipline. The step has found 
prominent advocates. In the “Atlantic Monthly” for 
September, 1905, President Pritchett asks, “Shall the 
university become a business corporation?” He suggests 
that the business of graduating men has little to do with 
the art of educating them, and concludes, “In the settle- 
ment of the larger questions of administration ... may 
not some council composed of trustees and faculty jointly 
share the responsibility to advantage?... To-day we 
need, in my judgment, to concern ourselves in the uni- 


362 MUSEUM IDEALS 


versity with the spiritual side of administration.” In arti- 
cles entitled “‘ University Control” published in “Science” 
in 1906 and 1912, Professor Cattell proposes that pro- 
fessors should take their place with alumni and inter- 
ested members of the community in the corporation of a 
university, and reports favoring opinions from a large 
majority of these holding the most important scientific 
chairs in the country. In his report for 1911-12 as presi- 
dent of Cornell University, Dr. Schurman writes: ‘The 
only ultimately satisfactory solution of the problem of 
the government of our universities is the concession to 
the professorate of representation on the board of trus- 
tees or regents.” Such agreement in a recommendation 
is a prophecy of its acceptance.! | 

When the day of the expert arrives, every corporation 
employing specialists will have its class of professional 
members, whether in a majority or a minority, whether 
chosen within or outside the staff, whether for limited 
periods or without term. Historical causes have both 
denied and begun to restore to expert ability in this country 
a place in the corporations to whose work it is necessary. 
The system of positive control by composite boards is a 
final settlement of the question of the corporate sphere 
of the expert because the right settlement, granting to 
competence its share in the management of competence. 
The day of the expert brightens on the horizon. Let us 
welcome its advancing beams. Either we ourselves, or our 
early successors, will be called to labor in its full sunshine. 

1 A suggestion looking in the direction of combined control of the British | 
Museum was made eighty years ago (July, 1836) by a Committee of Enquiry 
appointed by the House of Commons. “A board of officers, reporting and rec- 
ommending to the Trustees on matters of internal arrangement, would be a 
further means of greatly benefiting the institution, and would obviate the com- 
plaints of the heads of departments as to the want of proper intercourse with the 


Trustees.” Edward Edwards, Administrative Economy of the Fine Arts (Lon- 
don, 1840), p. 132. 


I 


ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION AND ITS TWO 
PERTURBATIONS ! 

ADMINISTRATIVE organization differs from other kinds 
in establishing the relation of superior and subordinate. 
Runners might agree to relay a message, or porters com- 
bine to carry a trunk, without any being over or under 
any other; but in an administrative bureau authority 
exists in grades. Administration (from the Latin ad, to, 
and minus, less) expresses subordination and implies 
superiority. 

A superior is he who commands; a subordinate he who 
obeys. A superior issues orders; a subordinate executes 
them. But before an order can be given and executed 
there must be an agreement as to who shall give it and 
who execute it. Appointment precedes command. A chan- 
nel of authority must be laid down before the authority 
can be exercised. 

Administrative machinery is subject to two cardinal 
forms of derangement — one functional, one structural. 
Both are diversions of authority from its appointed chan- 
nel; but the lighter affects authority only, the graver 
involves also appointment. The lighter may accordingly 
be called maladministration, the graver disorganization. 

In the accompanying illustration these two adminis- 
trative ills are exhibited in two figures. The dotted circles 
A B C represent official positions; the heavy black arrow 
represents the appointment of B; the outline arrow rep- 
resents the channel of authority or the orders which fol- 


- 


1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 
vol. x. (1916.) 


364 MUSEUM IDEALS 


low it. The dotted lines represent the vicious exercise of 
authority. This appears in the aspect of short circuits. 
In administrations of all kinds such divagation of authority 
is called “going over B’s head” or “interference with B.” 

A joint meeting of two committees of certain trustees 
—a committee that managed their finances and a com- 
mittee that managed their school — was once called to 
consider financing a school building. A building com- 
mittee of the same trustees was already in existence. Soon 





A @A’ 
B B 
© C C 


MALADMINISTRATION DI SORGANIZATION 


after the conference convened, one of the members spoke 
as follows: “It seems to me that when the trustees have 
asked some gentlemen to attend to certain business for 
them, they ought not to step in and do a part of it them- 
selves.’ All present assented, and after voting to invite 
the building committee to consider the question in hand, 
the joint meeting adjourned sine die. 'The action inadvert- 
ently and very naturally contemplated by the conferees 
was abandoned as soon as its nature as an administrative 
short circuit was clearly set before them. 

This utterance of practical wisdom contained in germ 
the whole theory of administrative organization. Address- 
ing the assembled gentlemen as if they were a meeting of 


ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION 365 


the board of trustees itself, the speaker admonished them 
that having appointed a subordinate body — namely, the 
building committee — to a certain duty, they were now 
preparing to go over that subordinate’s head. The remark 
brings out the fundamental fact that the sphere of a superior 
as his subordinate, not the subordinate’s work. The work 
is the sphere of the subordinate; whose appointment to 
it automatically dis-appoints others, his superior among 
the number. A superior cannot do; he can only order done 
by the proper subordinate. The lesson of the remark may 
be put into the form of the following general formula for 
normal administration: 

Anything that is proper for a subordinate to do is im- 
proper for any one else, including his superior. 

The reason why an act in an allotted sphere is normally 
improper for any one other than the person to whom it 
has been allotted is that it in so far forth nullifies the 
allotment. In particular, for a superior to allow himself 
or a third party to do the work of his subordinate is to 
appoint himself or the other for the time being in the sub- 
ordinate’s stead. It is, in a word, the supersession of the 
subordinate. 

Two cases are possible: either the subordinate is the 
appointee of the person superseding him, or he is not. The 
two diagrams represent the two cases. 

1. The subordinate is an appointee of the person super- 
seding him. He may be superseded either for a cause in 
the conditions of the enterprise administered or without 
such cause. If for cause, the supersession is of the nature 
of punishment, not a normal condition, but an attempt to 
correct abnormal conditions. If without cause, the super- 
session is again abnormal, being of the nature of a revision 
of judgment on the part of the appointing power. It is a 
change from the administrative structure once decided 


366 MUSEUM IDEALS 


upon. It is an example of vacillation in the management 
of the organization. It is further a discouragement to the 
official temporarily relieved of his duty. His plans of work 
are set in abeyance from no fault of his own. It is there- 
fore doubly. a case of administrative inefficiency. In a 
word, it is mal-administration. 

There is a case in which a superior may temporarily 
perform a subordinate’s duty without superseding him. 
This is the case in which his duty is assumed in order 
to show him how to perform it. Such a temporary re- 
allotment of duty is a part of his instruction and not a 
part of his official work, unless indeed extended until it 
implies that the subordinate is slow at his lesson. In this 
event it takes on the punitive tinge. 

2. The subordinate is not an appointee of the superior 
usurping his duty. Such action on the part of a supe- 
rior constitutes a defiance of the authority making the 
appointment. It confronts this authority with a hostile 
organizing act. It is not a lapse, but a breakdown of the 
organization. In a word, it is dis-organization. 

In a complex organization an official may be at once 
superior and subordinate; and his superior may himself 
be also a subordinate and his subordinates also superiors. 
Toward his superior the duty of any official is to execute 
the superior’s orders and to abstain from executing those 
of any one else. Toward his subordinates the duty of any 
official is to give orders to them and to them only — not 
even to himself in their stead. It is to be noted that in 
practice any personal relations between members of the 
same organization outside of the established channels of 
authority need to be watched lest they assume an official 
tinge and thereby tend to short circuit the organization 
and diminish its efficiency. 

An official may be tempted to overstep the appointed 


ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATION 367 


channels of authority in both ways. As a superior he 
may find it easier to get something done within a subor- 
dinate’s sphere by doing it himself or getting some one 
else to do it than to order it done by the subordinate. 
This is notably the case when there is not entire harmony 
of ideas between subordinate and superior. As a subor- 
dinate an officer may find it easier to do something within 
his sphere by obtaining for it the authority of some one 
else than his superior, who may not share his opinion of 
its importance. The authority of some power superior 
to both may be invoked. When the course in question is 
‘important, the temptation may be too strong to resist. 
Nevertheless, the duty of the forthputting official is plain 
and the corresponding right of the officer interfered with 
is plain; and any such short circuit gives a prima facie 
cause for complaint. But the sin of passing beyond supe- 
riors by no means besets subordinates as the sin of going 
over the heads of subordinates besets superiors. As usual 
in human affairs, the greater fault is with the stronger 
party. 

Much administrative friction and many dangerous 
administrative blazes arising from these personal ambi- 
tions and differences might be avoided were official right 
and official duty clearly evident to those involved, as 
these diagrams present them. 

Nevertheless, there may in any case be good reason for 
dissatisfaction either with the orders of a superior or the 
acts of a subordinate. A certain capacity to adjust itself 
may be assumed as proper to a living organism. Some 
right of appeal from a superior and some right of the su- 
persession of a subordinate is therefore a condition of the 
maintenance of any administrative organization in normal 
functioning. 

The only appeal applicable to all cases is an appeal to 


368 MUSEUM IDEALS 


the highest authority in the organization. Hence, the 
right of appeal to a monarch or to the presiding officer in 
non-political organizations is universally recognized as an 
inalienable privilege of any official, even the humblest. 
It is also a forcible but justifiable means by which an ulti- 
mate authority may be called upon for a review of the 
acts of a subordinate. Such occasional reviews are always 
wholesome and not infrequently necessary. At the same 
time an appeal is in effect a criticism of the officer appealed 
from and nearly or remotely suggests his removal. 

A correlative right of supersession is also recognized 
when employed as a diplomatic means of inviting a sub- - 
ordinate to perform his duties better, if not to relinquish 
them. Like a signal for trumps at cards, an extraordinary 
act —in this case the performance by a superior, or by 
some one else designated by him, of a subordinate’s duties 
— is used to attract the notice of the person concerned to 
a need that he can supply. The need here suggested is that 
of better work, perhaps by some one better qualified. An 
official should, therefore, always be alive to the possible 
meaning to him of a notable invasion of his sphere by a 
superior. Only two alternatives are possible: either the 
superior has given the subordinate just cause for com- 
plaint against him, or has taken a delicate method of sig- 
nifying causes for complaint against the subordinate. If 
the subordinate suspects this dissatisfaction, let him be- 
think himself or offer his resignation, lest discipline or 
removal follow. If not, and if these diagrams show that 
he has cause to complain, let him enter his complaint 
promptly, discreetly, and resolutely. 


Hit 


EXECUTIVE ABILITY WITH AND WITHOUT 
QUOTATION MARKS 

WRITTEN with quotation marks “executive ability”’ is 
familiarly interpreted as the capacity to “make the other 
fellow do all the work.” As such, the business value of the 
trait is often insisted on, albeit with a touch of sarcasm. 
Stated more formally, “executive ability” in this sense is 
a certain gift at turning responsibilities over to others in a 
way to leave one’s self free for manceuvres to hold one’s post 
or get another. These manceuvres consist largely in so 
framing executive orders that, if they succeed, one can 
seize the praise, and if they fail, one can shift the blame. 
Also familiarly and also with quotation marks, this art is 
called “the art of administration.” According to the claim 
of an acute subordinate in one of the bureaus of pre-war 
times at Washington, its head exhibited powers in this 
direction amounting to positive genius. 

What is an executive, and how can he display ability? 
An executive is one who sees that legislative enactments 
are carried out. He displays ability when he succeeds in 
getting them well carried out. Hence, executive ability 
implies a sympathetic understanding, first, of the orders, 
and second, of the subordinates who are to fulfil them. 
The able executive must believe in the enterprise and know 
enough about it to criticize the execution of the orders. He 
must also believe in his subordinates and appreciate their 
needs of opportunity, of reward in recognition or in pay, 
and upon occasion of reproof — the three conditions of 
their best codperation. Both qualities — an understand- 


370 -* ‘MUSEUM IDEALS 


ing of the work and an understanding of the workers — are 
essential to that unification of an administration, that 
esprit de corps, which alone makes it effective. The able 
executive is he who possesses both. 

These two qualities prove upon examination to be the 
opposites of the two indicated by quotation marks. It is 
true that an executive watches the work of other men; yet 
if his own mind and soul are in it, too, he will inevitably 
be led to put no little of himself into the transmission of 
his orders. Instead of scheming to retain his task, he will 
be full of plans for putting it through. Instead of looking 
about for other tasks, he will have no eyes but for his own. 
And if his mind and soul are with the men beneath him, he 
will seek neither to elude criticism nor purloin credit; for, 
while confident in his own powers, he will realize his need 
of their willing help. 

Such is the effective leader of men, — he who gets the 
most out of subordinates; the able executive, the true 
artist in administration. 

A man may possess the first qualification without the 
second, comprehending the work but ignoring the workers. 
This is the driver of men, he who impels others to do what 
they have no heart to do. Adding the second qualification, 
he becomes the leader, he who shows others how to get 
what at heart they want. Napoleon showed his soldiers the 
way to glory, General Booth his comrades the way to sal- 
vation. The record of both testified to their supreme com- 
petence for their tasks. 

Thus the quotation marks about the phrases “execu- 
tive ability” and “the art of administration” prove when 
traced to their source to be the ear-marks of incompetence. 
He who seeks mainly to consolidate himself or secure his 
retreat advertises himself in fear of discovery. He who 
shirks blame and steals praise advertises himself as merit- 


EXECUTIVE ABILITY 371 


ing one and unworthy of the other. He is the man in the 
wrong place — the bureaucrat. Both the immense devel- 
opment of administrative responsibility in modern times 
and the immense difficulty of putting men in their right 
places are signalized by the current development of bu- 
reaucracy. To quote the titles of Emile Faguet’s brilliant 
books, it is the “‘ Cult of Incompetence” in modern democ- 
racies that issues in the “Horror of Responsibilities” 
which emasculates their servants. Circumlocution Offices, 
and men with an official task, intent on “How not to do it”’ 
are plentier now than in Dickens’s time; from the rustic 
“learning out” his taxes against an inactive shovel on a 
highway, to the department chief doling out the letter of 
the law between cigars and gossip in a, government office. 
Since the Great War began, urgent necessity has put not a 
few men among us in their right places. The lesson of their 
survival must not be lost if the phrases executive ability 
and the art of administration are permanently to lose their 
quotation marks in our familiar speech. 


IV 
THE ECONOMICS OF A CHARITABLE FOUNDATION 


1. An enterprise begun by charity may or may not continue 
by charity. 

A CHARITABLE foundation consists of property given in 
trust for a public purpose. In carrying out this purpose, 
either the property itself or its usufruct may be applied. 
If only the usufruct and not the property, the enterprise 
may be continued indefinitely without further gifts, since 
usufruct under normal circumstances is forthcoming in- 
definitely; but if the property itself is applied, the enter- 
prise must sooner or later come to an end without further 
gifts. 


2. Achievement and acknowledgment the necessary condi- 
tions. 

Further gifts may reasonably be expected on two con- 
ditions: (1) When the original endowment has been well 
employed and more could be used; (2) when it has been 
employed in a way to commemorate the givers. Active 
interest in a cause commonly has its private side in a de- 
sire for remembrance through it. The trustee of a per- 
manent charitable work, if he is to employ the endow- 
ment itself successfully, must so manage the enterprise 
that men shall be impelled to give to it by both the public 
and the private motive. 


3. Control a condition excluded. 

A third condition, that of control by the giver, is in- 
compatible with the nature of a charitable foundation. 
A trustee that should surrender his judgment to a giver 
would commit a breach of trust. 


ECONOMICS OF A CHARITABLE FOUNDATION 373 


Codetermination through restrictions placed upon gifts 
is not control, even if the restrictions are not what the 
owner-in-trust would have chosen. For the gift is not 
accepted unless the advantages of its possession in spite 
of the restrictions are greater in the independent judg- 
ment of the owner-in-trust than the freedom preserved 
by its rejection. In the event, an owner-in-trust may re- 
verse his judgment; and the case is especially likely in 
this country, where the ability to acquire wealth has far 
outstripped the ability to decide wisely upon its use. A 
gift — whether public or private — which the owner-in- 
trust would rather restore, were it possible, than main- 
tain the conditions it imposes, is not a thing unsuspected 
among us. ‘The case transforms codetermination into con- 
trol by the giver. His gift has committed the foundation 
to a policy which the owner-in-trust condemns. In so far 
as its acceptance is felt to impeach the judgment of the 
owner-in-trust, it acts as a deterrent to future givers. 


4. Achievement an indirect responsibility of ownershrp-in- 
trust. 

In general the owner-in-trust of a charitable founda- 
tion acts through professional executives. The sphere of 
such aids is confined by the nature of their engagement 
to the essential purpose of the foundation. Their double 
duty is to advise how this purpose can best be carried out, 
and to carry it out in whatever approach to this way the 
owner-in-trust can approve. Of the two motives, public 
and private, for the continuation of support to a founda- 
tion, the expert agent has the first as his sole sphere. His 
function is to see, as far as in him lies and he is permitted, 
that the essential purposes he serves are fulfilled to the 
best advantage. 


374 MUSEUM IDEALS 


5. Acknowledgment a direct responsibility of ownership-in- 
trust. ° 

The private motive, that of remembrance, the expert 
agent is not called to consider. This source of continued 
support is the proper care of the owner-in-trust. Every 
charitable foundation is bound to see that the personalities 
of givers shall be permanently connected with it in some 
conspicuous fashion. The property given may be either 
transformed or used up; employed either for permanent 
uses or current expenses. If employed for permanent 
uses, the property, real or movable, into which it has 
been transformed must bear the name of the giver. If 
employed for current expenses, the giver’s name must be 
continued in public view by some means not likewise 
ephemeral. The names of the givers of gifts which have 
had their day may be inscribed in some place where all 
concerned in the foundation may find them. For the 
purpose of the commemoration of the most important 
temporary aid, a book destined for library shelves, as 
current statements are destined, does not suffice. A book 
is needed such as he who runs may read; if an actual 
book, one of imposing make and installed in a public place. 
Better than any bound volume is a roster in the form of 
such stone and metal inscriptions as outlast all memorials 
save those of the imagination. 


6. Capital and endowment economically distinguishable. 

A foundation fulfilling these two conditions — with 
an expert agent capable of serving its essential aims well, 
and with an owner-in-trust mindful to commemorate 
givers invariably, worthily, and permanently — is free 
to devote to its purposes the whole substance given it 
outright. The expenditure of free endowment is the eco- 
nomic method proper to charitable foundations; that in 


ECONOMICS OF A CHARITABLE FOUNDATION 375 


which they differ from gainful enterprises. When a firm 
runs behind annually or an individual lives beyond his 
income, we know where it will end. Their money was 
made, and if more be not made, there will sooner or later 
be none. The money of a charitable foundation was not 
made, but given; and if spent to good purpose and pub- 
licly recalled, more will sooner or later come. To conduct 
a gainful enterprise with an annual deficit is to invite’ 
ruin. To conduct a charitable enterprise with an annual 
. deficit is to invite re-endowment. It is a further depend- 
ence on the charity to which the foundation owes its 
origin. The foundation never would have existed but for 
the public spirit of the community, and to manage it 
with no further reliance thereon is a contradiction in act. 
Instinctive with private owners, the principle that prop- 
erty ought not to be used up does not apply to owners- 
in-trust. Capital indeed must not be used up, but free 
endowment may. The expenditure of capital leaves noth- 
ing to work with. The expenditure of free endowment 
provides something to ask for. 


7. The wise expenditure of free endowment demands a fusion ~ 
of the standpoints of owner-tn-trust and expert agent. 

The free endowment of a foundation should not be 
spent so fast that its work will be crippled before the 
ordinary processes by which good work becomes known 
can be expected to bring more. Its temporary needs may 
otherwise dominate its permanent interests. Expert opin- 
ion may be silenced and business prudence alone vocal. 
Control by possible givers may be admitted under the 
spur of poverty. Conversely, free endowment should not 
be so economized as to stint the good work which is the 
earnest of more. To these two opposite dangers every 
charitable foundation is at all times exposed. The advice 


376 MUSEUM IDEALS 


of an expert agent, absorbed in pursuing the end to which 
the foundation is dedicated may invite extravagance; the 
judgment of an owner-in-trust, absorbed in providing 
the means by which it subsists may invite parsimony. The 
choice of the happy middle course is hindered unless the 
mind of each is open to the considerations that weigh 
with the other. The ideal owner-in-trust would be his 
own expert agent. Capital is proverbially and justifiably 
timid; but endowment should rather take counsel of its 
hopes, as it would if sustained by an expert’s sense of the 
value and scope of the public purpose to which he has 
devoted his life. 


V 
MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 
MUSEUM PUBLICITY! 


WHEN an officer in a museum receives an inquiry about 
its ““House Organ,” what is meant is not, as he might be 
tempted to suppose, a great mechanism of pipes and reeds 
assumed to overflow a niche in its building, but a printed 
sheet advertising the institution. Most of the letter- 
writing and circular-distributing population of this coun- 
try seems to take it for granted that every House of what- 
ever name must have its Organ; that every concerted 
human effort must advance to the sound of its own trum- 
pet. 

The modicum of truth in this assumption is quite over- 
borne by its factor of error. The modicum of truth is that 
no enterprise can attain its purpose if those whom it is 
‘designed to benefit remain in ignorance of it. The factor 
of error is the naive idea that adequate publicity is no- 
where possible without the use of modern advertising 
methods. A Bulletin, or other announcement “70 whom 
it may concern,” is always in place: but a House Organ, 
or other advertising medium crying, “Know all men by 
these presents,’ may or may not be in place. The mistake 
of confusing the two kinds of publicity is the mark of a 
commercial nation and time; one that has not yet clearly 
grasped the distinction between public and private pur- 
poses, between charity and business. For charity, as we 
have long known, vaunteth not herself, is not puffed up, 
doth not behave herself unseemly, seeketh not her own; 

1 Reprinted from the American Magazine of Art, February, 1917. 


378 MUSEUM IDEALS 


while in business we find newspaper broadsides vaunting 
themselves, press agents puffing up their principals, rail- 
road billboards behaving themselves unseemly, and the 
whole apparatus of advertisement devoted to seeking its 
own. The distinction lies in the fact that a charity is un- 
selfish in essence, and a business selfish. As is often said, 
people do not go into business for their health, nor for 
the health of their neighbors. Charity, on the contrary, 
aims at the general health. From so deep a distinction 
in purpose it would appear evident that a correspond- 
ingly deep difference in methods must result. On the face 
of it, a museum, which is a charitable institution, has 
nothing whatever to do with a House Organ, which is an 
adjunct of present-day business. 

The question remains — What methods of publicity 
are consonant with a charitable purpose? Evidently such 
as seek their due share of public attention. Not all the 
public notice that can, by hook or crook, be won in com- 
petition, but such as comports with the public welfare, 
and the codperative part therein played by the charity 
in question. Thus churches post notices for the passer, 
and offer leaflets to those who enter; and charities of all 
kinds advertise their needs and opportunities in ways and 
directions adapted to the particular office they perform. 
Not the attention it can usurp, but that which it may 
claim, sets the limit to the methods of publicity to be 
used by any charity. 

Museums are that form of charity whose whole func- 
tion consists in offering tangible objects to public obser- 
vation. They are what we call exhibitions, and perma- 
nent ones. Observation is an affair of the contemplative, 
not the active life. The beneficiaries of schools, churches 
or hospitals must do something, or permit something to 
be done; the beneficiaries of museums are vistt-ors, or 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 379 


see-ers, persons who are held to do nothing but inspect 
certain permanent objects. But a small part of life can 
be devoted to purely contemplative ends. During most 
of our time we must be active otherwise than purely as 
visitors. The claim of all museums upon public attention 
is therefore a comparatively small one. They are insti- 
tutions established in the main for the use of leisure time. 
The kind of publicity appropriate to museums is confined 
to measures making known a profitable employment of 
spare moments. A certain reserve and modesty is in 
place in whatever methods of publicity are attempted by 
any museum. , 

There is an added and fundamental reason for reserve 
and modesty in publishing the advantages of museums 
of fine art. Museums are divided into two radically dis- 
tinct types, the primary purpose of the one being public 
information, of the other public delectation. To the first 
type belong museums of science, pure and applied, in- 
cluding history; to the second, museums of fine art. 
Information and delectation are two very different opera- 
tions of the human spirit: one calling into play the per- 
ceptions and the thoughts only, or what is called the 
mind; the other the sensibilities and the emotions, or 
what is called the heart. The mind can be opened at will, 
but not the heart. A meteoric specimen, General Wash- 
ington’s riding boots, or any other scientific or historical 
exhibit, could be shown in a street car and interest almost 
every one; a landscape by Corot might interest almost 
no one. The active effort to ad-vertise enjoyment, to turn 
people’s hearts to it, will in general be fruitless. It will 
be the form only and not the fact of advertisement. Every 
work of fine art proposes that we share in the taste of 
another person who has shaped it after his own heart; and 
in order that we should do so, our own hearts must be 


380 MUSEUM IDEALS 


ready to take the same mould. Hence no means of com- 
pelling the notice of every one will avail to make known: 
works of art. The means must be such as will attract the 
notice of those more or less disposed thereto in advance. 
The publicity proper to museums of art is passive and not 
active; consisting not in advertisements forcing atten- 
tion, but in notifications rewarding attention. An elec- 
tric sign over a museum of art would arrest the careless 
eye, but to small purpose. A notice painted in a public 
conveyance, hung in a hotel office or shown in a movie 
series would detain the interested eye and to good pur- 
pose. 

Some years ago it was argued that a museum should 
- seek popular vogue for its treasures by featuring them in 
newsy articles for Sunday papers. The enthusiasm which 
conceived a plan so up-to-date is taking, and the tolerant 
American is inclined at first to yield to it. Yet the con- 
tact of frigid fact acts as a deterrent. The project is 
ineffective and even condemnable. The reason why is 
that just given. Fine art is essentially retiring; it is one 
of the intrinsically unboomable things. Each of its in- 
numerable types and sub-types exists only for those who 
delight in that variety of it, and thereby betray some germ 
of like fancies in their own bosoms. Fine art offers some- 
thing to all of us, but withholds much from every one of 
us. It must reveal itself, cannot be forced or questioned 
—as Psyche and Elsa found out — and will reveal itself 
only unawares even to the sincere and devoted heart. 
What can be published abroad about it is only the hem 
of its garment, only the pound where it was once impris- 
oned. In another phrase, the effort to induce, through 
the public press, a wholesale appreciation of works of 
tangible art presents to us the spectacle of that whose 
essence is perfection imperfectly presented to imperfect 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC _ 381 


apprehension. This is non-sense. The fact that there are 
enthusiasts among us willing to undertake the task con- 
clusively proves them incompetent for it. It is to believe 
heaven within our reach and we archangels to grasp it, 
to think that that which is in reality the bearer of the 
highest and best experiences of human life can be scat- 
tered broadcast through it. The project suggests the late 
Whitelaw Reid’s half-humorous ideal — “‘the Froudes 
and Macaulays of the daily press’’ — which long gave a 
flavor of mockery to the word “journalism.” It suggests 
Matthew Arnold’s phrase for Edwin and his associates 
— “the young lions of the ‘Daily Telegraph.’” For it is 
as impossible that a newspaper should bring the contents 
of our museums effectively home to readers generally as 
it would be that an editor should write of passing events 
as Froude and Macaulay did of their subject-matter, or 
that a young lion should storm a walled city. This is the 
first and fundamental thing to recognize about such a 
purpose. It is based on untruth, and on untruth nothing 
can permanently stand. 

All museums would like to have crowds of visitors — 
but only crowds of real visitors, real see-ers of what is 
before them, gaining something beside boredom from it. 
Let them all be open to crowds, and let museums of sci- 
ence and history even seek to attract crowds, as by set- 
ting up specimen show-windows in business streets, or 
by organizing visits en masse. Most of such throngs will 
get much from the exhibits they are marshalled to see. 
But let not museums of fine art rely on these insistent 
methods, or deem them effective because they gather 
crowds. The publicity that brings visitors willy-nilly 
yields a minimal harvest of real comprehension and a 
maximal by-product of the familiarity that breeds con- 
tempt and dulls vision. For museums of fine art effective 


882 MUSEUM IDEALS 


publicity will consist in the widest public offer, verbal and 
actual, of the opportunity to see beautiful things and of 
help in seeing them well. Compulsion in any form, as by 
the trumpeting of a House — or any other — Organ, is as 
futile for their aims as every effort to lay out a highway 
to the sky has always been and will always be. 


STATE SUPPORT AND FREE ADMISSION 


Museums aim at the permanent preservation of their con- 
tents. As time goes on these come to consist in increasing 
measure of survivals from the past. Examples of con- 
temporary art, when acquired for permanent preserva- 
tion, take their place eventually as examples of the art 
of a bygone time. In the main, museums are the reposi- 
tory of our artistic inheritance of painting, sculpture, and 
the minor arts, in so far as this inheritance is not still 
distributed in public places, in homes or in the shops of 
dealers. 

In such memorials of the life of the imagination all civil- 
ized men have a common interest. Ever since the French 
Revolutionists nationalized the collections of the Ancien 
Régime, the duty of the public to maintain museums of 
art has been admitted, and the right of the public to a 
certain freedom of access to all great permanent collec- 
tions, whether privately or. publicly founded and main- 
tained, has been recognized. 

Within recent years questions have been raised regard- 
ing both this duty and this right. In our own country 
museums founded by private initiative have appealed 
for and obtained a measure of public support. In Europe — 
it has been asked whether the opportunities for free ad- 
mission to the greater museums have not been made more > 
liberal than is either needful or desirable. The nickname 
applied to the Louvre “le calorifére national,” “the 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 383 


national radiator,’ suggests that a desire for physical 
comfort rather than any interest in the exhibits inspires 
a good share of its winter visitors. In Germany, the dust 
and other atmospheric impurities created by holiday 
crowds in picture galleries, have been signalized as a real 
threat to the canvases. 

As to public support: How far is it desirable that 
museums of art founded by private initiative should upon 
due occasion become in a measure a charge upon the 
public? 

It is only within recent years that communities have 
taken or shared the initiative in the foundation of museums 
of art. The older museums abroad and at home have 
originated in private collections either bequeathed to the 
public or taken possession; of in the name of the nation.- 
The purchase of Sir Hans Sloane’s collection in 1753 was 
the nucleus of the British Museum: the Pitti and the 
Uffizzi collections gathered by the Medici family have 
now been acquired by the Italian Government. Some 
great museums, like the Vatican in Rome, still remain 
private property, while open in a measure free to the 
public. Some, like our American museums, mostly es- 
tablished during the past half-century, are the property 
of corporations created for the purpose. 

The reason for this historical evolution is plain. The 
preservation of artistic remains, while appealing strongly 
to individuals, is a matter which governments can and 
must postpone to other cares. Museums of art, like 
government inventories of artistic riches, and like laws 
against the export of works of art, are the outgrowth of 
sentiments to which bodies politic are by no means in- 
variably in a position to respond. 

The moral of the evolution is equally plain. Individual 
initiative may to advantage be seconded by collective 


384 MUSEUM IDEALS 


effort in the creation and conduct of museums of art. The 
best results are to be obtained only by a coéperation be- 
tween private and public effort. Provisionally, the ques- 
tion just put is to be answered in the affirmative. Museums 
of art founded by private initiative may to advantage 
become, upon due occasion, in a measure a charge upon 
the public. 

To secure the codperation of the public, the cause of 
artistic salvage to which museums are devoted needs 
to be presented in ways which will tell upon people in 
general. The permanent collections established in Ameri- 
can cities find no difficulty in obtaining exemption from 
taxation in return for a measure of free admission. ‘They 
are classed with our churches as public benefactors. To 
this extent they are all a charge upon the public. The 
same argument may and generally does avail to secure 
positive financial aid. Funds for maintenance have the 
strongest appeal. A tax for the creation of a public mu- 
seum promises advantages which the taxpayer may not 
live to enjoy, and which he may find problematical. In 
his mind other municipal needs may be more pressing: 
and he may mistrust the wisdom available for the selec- 
tion of a site, the choice of building plans, the acquisition 
of exhibits. The appeal of a going concern, on the con- 
trary, — of exhibits open to his inspection, if not a build- 
ing already a pride to the city,—1is demonstrable and 
present. Asked to tax himself for the current expenses of 
an established institution he has the data already at hand 
for a judgment. The maintenance of the museum during 
any year inures to his benefit during that year. He is 
asked to contribute to the preservation and installation 
of collections which he may visit, show to others, enjoy 
and profit from. He is asked to help pay the salaries of 
officers whose expert knowledge he may at any time call 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 385 


upon, and to help pay for arranging and advertising the 
work of docents and lecturers from whom he may gain 
instruction. Of the worth of these things he may as- 
sure himself by actual trial. Most American communities 
value them highly, and are even willing to pay the cost 
of the buildings needed to make them available. The 
city of New York has provided liberally toward the 
buildings of the Metropolitan Museum. The act passed 
a few years ago by the Legislature of Minnesota author- 
izes cities to appropriate money for housing as well as 
exhibiting collections of art owned by private associa- 
tions. People have ceased to fear that buildings so pro- 
vided will be a disappointment. The appeal for mainte- 
nance remains, nevertheless, the irrefragable one: being 
a request to pay for value received. The taxpayer may 
justly be asked to contribute toward the current expenses 
of an institution already built, already filled, and already 
open within limits to his free use. In this event the only 
question before him is as to the amount these privileges 
are worth. 

There is another question before the incorporated 
museum. With responsibility goes power. If the com- 
munity served by a museum makes itself responsible 
through a tax for a necessary share in the maintenance 
of an institution, it will naturally tend to claim a deci- 
sive share in its control. Yet the charter of any incor- 
porated institution vests its control in the corporation 
alone. For the corporation to admit any outside coercion, 
even that of the community, would be a breach of the 
trust imposed by the state from which, directly, or in- 
directly, it receives its powers. Yet the taxpayers are 
at any time liable to be tempted to exercise it. There 
appears but one solution of the difficulty. The tax may 
be imposed by the power creating the corporation. Its 


386 MUSEUM. IDEALS 


grant is then in effect a supplement to the charter control- 
ling its use. Its withdrawal to compel a policy unwelcome 
to the corporation would be in effect a partial abrogation 
of the charter, a resumption of control once formally 
made over to certain chosen persons. Such coercion by 
the state through the threat of withholding support to 
its own creature is hardly to be anticipated unless under 
circumstances that would foreshadow the repeal of the 
charter. Unless a case could be made out for this drastic 
step, the corporation might be expected to be left free 
for its allotted duties. The interest of the public in the 
work of an institution may otherwise be safeguarded by 
the designation of governmental representatives in the cor- 
poration as originally constituted. In the instance of mu- 
seums of fine art, this provision for governmental mem- 
bers presents a form of that union of public with private 
effort which experience has shown indispensable to their 
successful management. A state tax would give the gov- 
ernmental members of the corporation an influence in 
its councils based on public outlay as well as public 
advantage. Their wise choice, including doubtless a rep- 
resentation of the community directly concerned, would 
go far to insure a wise exercise of public control. Assum- 
ing a state tax, the question whether museums of fine 
art founded by private initiative should upon due occa- 
sion become in a measure a charge upon the publie ap- 
pears to admit an affirmative answer, not provisional but 
definitive. 

As to free admission. What is the justification, and 
what are the limits of the right of the public to admission 
without pay to museums of fine art? | 

The right rests on deep foundations. Fine art is in 
its fundamental character a thing totally diverse from 
money. Works of fine art are indeed goods that can be 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 387 


bought and sold; but the art in them is a good free to all 
those, and only to those, who are endowed with the capac- 
ity, native or acquired, to enjoy it. For a museum of 
art to sell the right of admission conflicts with the essen- 
tial nature of its contents. 

Good things are of two kinds: the kind that is divided 
—that is, lessened — when shared, a conspicuous in- 
stance being money: and the kind that is multiplied — 
that is, increased — when shared, a conspicuous instance 
being the enjoyment of art. Dante in the Purgatorio 
contrasts the two kinds as the earthly and the heavenly 
form of value, respectively: 


“Because your longings are directed thither 
Where shares are lessened by companionship, 
*T is envy moves the bellows of your sighs; 
But if the love of the celestial sphere 
Should upward turn your passionate desire, 
That matter would not occupy your heart. 
Because the more there are who there say ‘Ours’ 
The more each one possesses of delight. 


And like Sates sion reflects the ether? 
Mr. Bertrand Russell has lately recalled the distinction. 
“There are goods in regard to which individual posses- 
sion Is possible, and there are goods in which all can share 
alike. The food and clothing of one man is not the food 
and clothing of another: and if the supply is insufficient, 
what one man has obtained is at the expense of some 
other man. On the other hand ...if one man knows a 


1“ Perché s’ appuntan li vostri disiri 
Dove per compagnia parte si scema, 
Invidia muove il mantaco ai sospiri. 

Ma se |’ amor della spera suprema 
Torcesse in suso il desiderio vostro, 
Non vi sarebbe al petto quella tema, 

Ché per quanti si dice pid li nostro 
Tanto possiede piu di ben ciascuno., 


E come specchio |’ una all’ altro rende.”’ 
Purgatorio, xv, 49-56: 75. 


388 MUSEUM IDEALS 


science, that does not prevent others from knowing it: 
on the contrary, it helps them to acquire the knowledge. 
In such matters...any increase anywhere tends to 
produce an increase everywhere.” In like manner money 
is decreased when shared and the enjoyment of art in- 
creased. A fortune shared is, as we say, cut up. But a 
symphony is not cut up among its audience. Our enjoy- 
ment of a play is greater if we have some one to talk it 
over with, of a joke if we have some one to tell it to. Like- 
wise our enjoyment of a picture or a statue grows by con- 
tagion from that of a companion. Of our co-partakers 
in such goods we can say, ““The more the merrier.” Money 
and fine art are like oil and water: differing and even 
mutually repellent in essence. Art is necessarily joined 
with its ill-assorted companion in origin and generally 
in fate. Artists must make a living, and collectors inevi- 
tably compete for their achievements. A work of art is 
rescued from this companionship with money when it 
reaches a museum. Yet the divorce is not complete while 
money is demanded as the price of its contemplation. 
The office of a museum is not ideally fulfilled until access 
to it is granted without pay. The justification of an en- 
trance fee is wholly practical and temporary. It may be 
a necessary present means of increasing the revenues of 
the institution. 

Admission without pay does not mean admission with- 
out restriction. The ideal management of a museum of 
art involves limitation of free public access on various 
evident grounds. 

It may be claimed that the dignity of works of art suf- 
fers from unlimited freedom of access. We do not value 
things unless we get them at some cost or other. Entered 
at will, a treasure house of the imagination may become 
chiefly a convenience: perhaps a calorifére national. An 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 389 


entrance fee has been proposed for the Louvre, but in 
addition to its fault of principle, an entrance fee unques- 
tionably bars frequent visits on the part of most people. 
Yet any fruitful interest in fine art demands repeated 
contact with it. The reservation of hours or days would 
safeguard the impressiveness of museum collections with- 
out barring frequent visits, and such reservations are called 
for on other grounds as well. 

The safety of collections of fine art imperatively de- 
mands some limitation of open time. The contents of 
museums are very perishable things, subject to injury 
from dust and heat and light and moisture and vibration. 
The intention is to keep them indefinitely, and no pre- 
caution possible short of wholly shutting them away 
from view is too great to insure their indefinite survival. 
It has been remarked that no objects have thus far ex- 
isted in museum galleries a tithe of the time that many 
of them have lived. How long Egyptian sculptures, dat- 
ing from millennia ago, are likely to survive as museum 
objects no one as yet can tell.! The query is one to em- 
phasize, though not as yet to define, the duty of museums 
to limit the exposure of their collections to crowds. 

The closest study of museum objects is impossible when 
all comers are admitted to the galleries. A museum fails 
in its duty to artists and archeologists without reserving 
time for their undisturbed work. Cases must be opened, 
objects removed to more convenient places, apparatus 
installed. It is no public loss but an ultimate public gain 
that the fullest technical and scientific use should be 
made of museum collections: and for this purpose closed 
hours or days are essential. 


1 “A museum is only a temporary place. There is not one storehouse in the 
world that has lasted a couple of thousand years. Broadly speaking there is no 
likelihood that the majority of things now in museums will yet be preserved 
anything like as long as they have already lasted.” Professor Flinders Petrie, 
Methods and Aims of Archeology, pp. 180-82. 


390 MUSEUM IDEALS 


Another need for closed days concerns the private fac- 
tor in the successful conduct of museums of art. Those in- 
dividuals who actively contribute to the maintenance and 
development of museum collections have rights in their 
inspection comparable to those of the public for whose 
benefit also these efforts are undertaken. Founders and 
benefactors, societies of contributors like the Amis du 
Louvre and the subscribers to our American museums may 
without injustice claim a fraction of time in which they can 
call their own, collections that are in great measure their 
own work. 

In America there is another need which justifies re- 
serving hours or days for the use of the private supporters 
of a museum. It is the habit among us to sneer at Society 
spelled with a capital 5S. Yet whatever the justification 
of the satirists from La Bruyére down, a museum of fine 
art should not join in the sneer. Above all other insti- 
tutions it should seek to do justice to the kernel of value 
hidden under the despised yet envied husk. Amiel has 
spoken of a brilliant social gathering as “an improvised 
work of art,” “wne wuvre d’art improvisée.” The art it 
illustrates is the art of manners, the art whose material 
is our enjoyment of one another’s company for its own 
sake. This is as truly a fine art as architecture or the 
drama. All civilized men do something toward the adorn- 
ment of their ordinary behavior, something toward mak- 
ing it agreeable in itself — that is, a work of art. ‘‘How 
are you this morning, Mrs. Blank,” said her acquaintance, 
“not that I care a fig, but it sounds better to ask.” There 
are all grades of attention to manners, from untoward 
beginnings like this to the finished product that makes 
the gentleman and the lady, the grand seigneur and the 
grande dame. Among the artistic standards that a museum _ 
may represent, those of manners find indirectly an as- 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 391 


sured place. Fine art has always been associated with 
the lives of those who have had exceptional opportuni- 
ties — however inadequately availed of in many cases 
—for seeking to make themselves personally agreeable 
one to another. It has adorned private as well as public 
affairs, the palaces and gardens of nobles as well as the 
sanctuaries and forums of the people. Gathered in a 
museum it does not lose the association. A museum of 
fine art is a great social engine, in the narrower, and, 
among us, serio-comic sense of the word society. Its pri- 
vate supporters are drawn mainly from the ranks of those 
exempt from the cares of livelihood. It may properly lend 
its influence toward promoting their combined endeavors 
toward the creation of valid social standards: and this 
incidental duty warrants granting its private supporters 
special privileges in the use of its collections. A democ- 
racy recognizes no privileges based on blood. It substi- 
tutes respect of qualities for respect of persons: in the 
spirit of Marshal Turenne’s reply to a snob, “You who 
are so fond of ancestors, look at me. I am an ancestor 
myself.”” A democracy has no titled class to set standards 
for the fine art of daily behavior. There is all the more 
reason that it should conserve and nourish such personal 
standards as have their root in demonstrated quality. 
Those persons who wisely and liberally codperate in the 
opportunities offered by museums of art for forwarding 
the life of the imagination among the whole population, 
demonstrate their quality; and the foundation prin- 
ciple of democracy justifies showing them the regard they 
have earned by the demonstration. In this legitimate 
sense of the abused word, our museums are right in ally- 
ing themselves with Society spelled with the capital S. 
All these reservations of time taken together need 
amount to but a small fraction of museum days. Ideal 


392 MUSEUM IDEALS 


management would allow them all. Nevertheless, for 
most of the time a museum can and should be open free. 
Experience indicates that a day or two reserved from 
every seven would suffice for all its private needs. The 
recognition of public support and immediate public ad- 
vantage would still be greatly preponderant, as the un- 
equivocally public purpose of all fine art requires it should 
be. 

This appears, for the museum of the present, a satis- 
factory settlement of the question of free admission. Yet 
one doubt remains. Is the permanent preservation of 
more delicate museum objects really possible under gal- 
lery conditions — under any conditions, that is, to which 
the public can be asked to submit? The public use of a 
room inevitably exposes its contents to a strong light, 
to changes of temperature and moisture, to dust and pol-. 
luted air, to vibration, and to a certain risk, though it 
may be a small risk, of fire and theft. These sources of 
danger can all be avoided; but to what purpose, if the 
public is thereby deprived of a sight of the objects? 

There is an imaginable way in which this dilemma may 
perhaps in the far future be solved. Already a drawing 
can be mechanically reproduced with such perfection 
that the paper on which it is printed alone distinguishes 
it, even to a careful eye, from the original. Manifolding 
processes, now among the wonders of modern invention, 
are doubtless not at the end of their development. What if 
invention in future should provide means for reproducing 
pictures, statues, and objects of minor art as exactly as 
drawings nowadays? The public interest would then not 
be served, but disserved by exhibiting the originals pub- 
licly. They would better be preserved apart as data for 
inquiry and as bases from time to time, of reproduction. 
Museums of this far future would consist of galleries 


MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC 393 


containing reproductions and vaults containing originals. 
These would be kept under constant and safe conditions, 
like our standards of weight and measure, and like them, 
would become subjects of study and sources from which 
to obtain representatives for public use. We should all 
then be brought up on reproductions; but the word would 
have lost its flavor of vulgarity. The problem of the in- 
definite preservation of fragile artistic remains would 
have been solved as far as human foresight could solve it, 
without interference with the right of every one to see 
them as they should be seen. 

The seven ideals of this book hold for these dream- 
museums, as for our real ones. Even the practical recom- 
mendations here derived from the ideals would in but 
one instance become obsolete. There would be no need 
of new forms of show-case, for there would be no need of 
show-cases at all. The objects shown would all stand 
free in the galleries. It might even be possible to per- 
mit the handling indispensable in some instances for the 
full comprehension of an artist’s achievement. Lorenzo 
Ghiberti confessed that only the sense of touch revealed 
the last perfections of certain antique sculpture. If the 
contents of the public museums of the future were all 
cheaply and easily reproducible, the loss and damage re- 
sulting from their open installation would be as nothing 
compared with the enhanced interest and comprehen- 
sibility of the exhibits. | 

But though the problem of the least exacting form of 
show-case would have become a dead issue, the behavior 
of the human mind and muscles under fatigue would not - 
have changed nor would the behavior of the retina under 
glare have changed. The new inventions would not have 
changed the nature of fine art as an opportunity of cul- 
ture. The need of an interpretation of museum contents 


394 MUSEUM IDEALS 


would have grown as the lapse of time made more of them 
antiques. The capacity of the expert would have in- 
creased with the increase of knowledge, and have strength- 
ened his claim to a share in museum management. In 
discussing all these seven ideals, in separating what is 
valuable from what is negligible in them, in supplying 
their deficiencies, we can feel that we are building for an 
indefinite future. 


APPENDIX 


A. AIMS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTRUCTION 


AND MANAGEMENT OF MUSEUMS OF FINE ART: 
A SYLLABUS 


B. MUSEUM REGISTRY OF PUBLIC ART 
C. OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPEAN MUSEUMS 


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APPENDIX 


A 


AIMS AND PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTRUCTION 
AND MANAGEMENT OF MUSEUMS OF FINE 
ART: A SYLLABUS! 


BensaMin Ives GInMAN AND MatrHew STEWART PRICHARD? 


AIMS 


By a museum of fine art is here understood any permanent 
exhibition restricted to objects possessing artistic quality. By 
artistic quality is understood the worth a man may give his 
work for contemplation apart from use.® 

By the appreciation of fine art is understood the perception 
of artistic quality. To appreciate a work of art is to see it with 
the eyes of its maker when he looked upon it and found it good. 
In appreciation a beholder receives into his own spirit the secret 
treasure of another’s heart, gathered by an observant eye, 


1 Reprinted from the Museums Journal for July, 1909. 

2 This essay expresses opinions reached in the service of the Museum of Fine 
Arts, Boston, and formulated during the preparation of plans for the present 
building of the museum. The paper was read at the first meeting of the Ameri- 
can Association of Museums in New York, May 15, 1906. It had been prepared 
during the previous winter with the aid of Mr. Matthew Stewart Prichard, then 
a colleague, now a prisoner of war at Ruhleben, Germany. The section on aims 
restates briefly the esthetic ideal of art museum management advanced by Mr. 
Gilman in two letters to the Boston Evening Transcript of October 12 and 28, 
1899, and argued at length in the essay on “The Distinctive Purpose of Mu- 
seums of Art,” first published in the Museums Journal for January, 1904, and 
reprinted above. Among the Principles those of Dual Arrangement, Harmony, 
and Reality were stated by Mr. Prichard in his essay on “Current Theories, 
etc.,” privately printed in ‘“‘Communications to the Trustees regarding the 
new building” (1. March, 1904). The principle of Dual Arrangement applies 
to museums of art the division of collections into a series for exhibition and 
a series for study now common in museums of science. Of the remaining four 
principles, two, those of Quality and Service, are based on previous practice 
of the Museum in Boston, and two, those of Simplicity and Segregation, state 
conclusions embodied in its present building. 

3 The artistic motive, as the desire to create (to call into being) differs from 
the practical motive, the desire to employ (to call into action). Creation di- 
rectly affects only the thing created, employment directly affects other things 
than that employed. The two impulses, artistic and practical, reach fruition 
together when intrinsic value is given to an instrument of valuable results. 


398 APPENDIX 


wrought by a fertile fancy and conveyed by a cunning hand.! 
Artistic production is imaginative utterance; appreciation its 
understanding. 

Unless understood, an utterance misses its purpose, whether 
of pleasure or profit. Understanding is therefore the normal 
mental attitude toward utterance. But another attitude of 
mind is possible. We may seek to know not the utterance 
itself, but other things in relation to it. To appreciation 
as knowledge of art corresponds investigation as knowledge 
about it. 

Hence, any permanent repository of works of fine art has a 
double function: a primary one, that of securing appreciation 
for its contents; and a secondary one, that of conducting or at 
least permitting the investigation of them. Those who approach 
a work of art seeking to know the aim of the artist are first to 
be considered in the administration of a museum; those seeking 
to further their own scientific or technical aims in the examina- 
tion of a work are to be offered every facility compatible with 
its paramount right, as speech, to a hearing. 


PRINCIPLES 
I. Smvpxicrry 


A museum building should be simple in design, externally 
and internally. 

For a building elaborate in effect competes with the collec- 
tions for the attention of the visitor and detracts from those of 
a different spirit from its own. Further, a monumental design 
complicates the problem of lighting by restricting freedom of 
fenestration.? 


1 Albrecht Duerer. “‘Daraus wirdet der versammlet heimlich Schatz des 
Herzen offenbar durch das Werk und die neue Creatur die einer in seinem Herzen 
schoepft in der Gestalt eines Dings.” (In artistic production “the secret treas- 
ure of the heart gathered (by observation) is made manifest through the work 
and the new creation which a man shapes in his heart in the form of a thing.” 
“*On Human Proportion,” Excursus at end of book m1, Lange and Fuhse. Duerer’s 

Schriftlicher Nachlass (Halle, 1893), p. 277. 

2 Light from the sky. In order that the lighting of a room shall be adequate 
for museum purposes, it is necessary that an ample area of sky shall be visible 
from its windows. For the light reflected from buildings or other objects is 
much more strongly colored than light from the sky, and may be regarded 
as an adulteration to be minimized. 

Dr. A. B. Meyer, formerly Director of the Royal Zoélogical, Anthropological 
and Ethnographical Museum, Dresden. Studies of Museums, reprinted in trans- 
lation in the Report of the United States National Museum (1903), p. 389. 


APPENDIX 399 


The architectural effect of many museum buildings has been 
obtained at the expense of the works of art they were built to 
show. All writers on museum topics deprecate this unneces- 
sary sacrifice to rich and imposing facades, domes, stairways, 
corridors and anterooms and to the exuberant decoration of 
galleries, agreeing that a museum building should constitute an 
unobtrusive frame to the picture presented by the collections, 
and that as such it ought to be made to yield a. specific archi- 
tectural type, with its own distinctive if more modest beauty.! 


II. SEGREGATION 


A museum building designed for large and varied collections 
should be divided into sections not directly connected, each 
section to contain no more galleries than can be seen at one visit 
without undue fatigue; and agreeable resting-places should be 
introduced between the sections. ' 

For: first, galleries should not be thoroughfares. Those who 
traverse exhibition rooms with the sole aim of getting elsewhere 
both weary themselves and disturb others. A museum should 
be so arranged that only those who have some interest in a 
given section will have occasion to enter it.? 


1 Dr. G. E. Pazaurek, Director of the Landes-Gewerbe Museum, Stuttgart. 
““Museumsbauten,” Wiener Bauindustrie Zeitung, vol. xv (1903), p. 343. 

Dr. Adolf Furtwingler, late professor at the University of Munich and 
Director of the Glyptothek. Ueber Kunstsammlungen in alter und neuer Zeit 
(Miinchen, 1899), p. 25. 

John Ruskin, letter to the London Times, of December 29, 1852, on the Na- 
tional Gallery. 

Sir J. C. Robinson, late Superintendent of the Art Collections of the South 
Kensington Museum, Nineteenth Century (1892), p. 1025. 

Dr. Ernst Grosse, professor at the University of Freiburg, and Director of the 
Freiburg Museum. “Every gallery is nothing more nor less than a great frame 
for the art works it contains, and like a good frame it should draw no attention 
at all to itself, either by a too scanty or a too rich decoration.” Report of the 
Mannheim Conference of Museum Officials (Berlin, 1903), p. 125. 

2 The germ of this arrangement is found in the old Pinakothek at Munich 
(1836), where pictures of the same school are placed in one section consisting 
of a top-lighted gallery for the large pictures and side-lighted cabinets for the 
smaller. The architect, Baron von Klenze, is quoted as saying, “I wish to 
allow the possibility of arriving at any particular school without going through 
another, and for this purpose I have a corridor running the whole length of the 
building, which communicates with each separate room.” 

Edward Edwards, formerly of the British Museum, Administrative Economy 
of the Fine Arts (London, 1840), p. 269. 

Professor W. Stanley Jevons, late professor at University College, London, 
Methods of Social Reform, p. 59. 


400 APPENDIX 


Second, small collections are more rewarding to the visitor 
than large ones. A greater unity of impression is possible with 
fewer exhibits and the attention is fresher for them. 

Third, museum visiting is one of the most fatiguing of occu- 
pations. To see a work of art thoroughly is not only an effort 
of the eyes but in general of the body, in standing, bending, or 
other muscular tension; to understand it taxes memory and 
intelligence alike. In proportion as appreciation is more com- 
plete, the need of occasional relaxation increases. 

The objection that by a system of intermediate vestibules 
or corridors the distances to be traversed in the museum as a 
whole are increased, is not valid. Museum fatigue may be said 
to come solely from standing and looking: the actual walking 
is rather a relief. ‘The objection that seats in the galleries suffice 
for rest, overlooks the fact that, although indispensable, they 
do not afford the mental freedom and diversion necessary to 
keep the mind of the visitor freshly receptive. 

A museum should, if possible, be situated in grounds laid out 
for use as a park; not only to give opportunity for extension and 
to obtain protection from noise, dust, and risk of fire, but also 
on account of the power of natural beauty to draw visitors and 
put the mind in tune for beautiful works of art; and, further, 
in order to permit the free use of gardens and courts by visitors 
in moderate weather as an extension of the facilities for pleasant 
relaxation afforded in the building.? 


Dr. F. A. Bather, Assistant Keeper, Department of Geology, British Mu- 
seum, Presidential Address, Museums Journal (1903), p. 79. 

Dr. Alfred Lichtwark, Director of the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Report of Mann- 
heim Conference of Museum Officials (Berlin, 1903), p. 119. 

1 Dr. G. Pauli, Director of the Kunsthalle, Bremen, Musewmskunde, vol. 1 
(1905), 3, p. 149. 

2 Dr. J. Leisching, Director of the Imperial Austrian Museum of Art and 
Industry, Vienna, Report of the Mannheim Conference (1903), p. 134. 

Dr. J. H. von Hefner-Alteneck, first Director of the Bavarian National Mu- 
seum, Munich, caused the open space behind the museum to be laid out as a 
garden and used for the installation of objects (decorative statues, grave monu- 
ments) originally intended for out of doors. “‘Thousands of visitors have ex- 
pressed their grateful thanks that, apart from the pleasure of seeing these 
monuments, they were able in the summer months to recuperate here under 
the open sky or in shady bowers from the fatigue of looking about within the 
museum.”s Entstehung, Zweck und Einrichtung des Bayerischen National Mu- 
seums in Muenchen (1890), p. 2. ; 

At Avignon “‘the pictures are arranged in a charming way in great apartments 
opening upon a solitary garden where there are large trees. There reigns in 
this place a profound tranquillity that recalls the beautiful churches of Italy; 
the spirit, already half detached from the vain interests of the world, is ina 
mood to appreciate the loftiest beauty. ... I passed two delightful hours dream= 


APPENDIX 401 


Ill. Duat ARRANGEMENT 


Each section of a museum building should contain two groups 
of galleries; one for the exhibition of selected objects in a way 
to promote their appreciation, the other for the installation of 
remaining objects in a way to facilitate their investigation. The 
contents of the exhibition galleries should be varied as oppor- 
tunity offers. The reserve galleries should be connected with 
an office, a class-room, a work-room, and a special library, and 
should be open to any one wishing to enter. 

All large collections of prints, coins, and textile fabrics are ad- 
ministered as a store of possessions freely accessible and drawn 
upon for public exhibition. The extension of this principle to 
collections of all kinds promises five advantages: 

(1) By closely installing much of its contents a museum may 
add to them without correspondingly enlarging its build- 
ing. The principle contributes to solve the pressing prob- 
lem of the growth of museums. 

(2) A museum provided with reserve galleries is free to ac- 
quire any object worthy of permanent preservation, 
whether suitable for continuous public exhibition or not. 

The reserve galleries may offer accommodation for ob- 
jects of unmanageable size, whether great or small, objects 
of scientific or technical interest chiefly, objects painful or 
repugnant in motive, and those whose liability to injury 
from dust, light, change of humidity or temperature, me- 
chanical strain or shock, demands their exhibition under 
special restrictions or infrequently. 

(3) In the main galleries the public is offered a rewarding 
exhibit in place of the more or less wearisome mass of 
objects commonly shown in museums. 

(4) In the secondary galleries, the conditions of space, free- 
dom, light, guidance, apparatus, and companionship 
are such as most favor the purposes of scientific and 
technical students. 

(5) The interest of the community in the museum is main- 
tained by changes in its exhibition galleries.? 


ing in this museum. How different from that at Lyons!” Stendhal (Henri 
Beyle), Mémoires d’un Touriste, vol. 1, p. 206. 

Professor A. R. Wallace, “‘Museums for the People,” Macmillan’s Magazine, 
vol. xrx (1888-89), p. 249. 

1 Professor Louis Agassiz embodied the idea of public and reserve collections 
in his plan for the Museum of Comparative Zodlogy at Harvard in 1860. Third 
Annual Report of the Museum of Comparative Zodlogy (Cambridge, U.S.A., Octo- 


402 APPENDIX 


The following negative definitions of the principle of Dual 
Arrangement may serve to prevent misunderstanding: 

(1) The principle does not propose to choose for exhibition 
all objects above a certain quality and leave in reserve 
all objects below that quality. This would result in an 
installation permanent as long as the museum standards 
were unchanged, instead of the varying exhibitions ad- 
vocated. Doubtless in most collections more or fewer 
objects would demand to be shown in the exhibition gal- 
leries all the time, and these would chiefly be among the 
finer; and more or fewer could never be wisely removed 
from the reserve galleries at all, and these would chiefly 
be among the inferior. In so far the general level of the 


ber, 1861), p. 10. See also Bibl. Univ. et Revue Suisse (47™¢ Année nouv. per.) 
vol. xiv (1862), pp. 527-40: referred to in Dr. A. B. Mayer’s Studies of Mu- 
seums, p. 325. 

Dr. Karl Moebius, late Professor of Zodlogy in the University of Berlin and 
Managing Director of the Royal Museum of Natural History, Berlin, “The 
Proper Arrangement of Great Museums,” Deutsche Rundschau (1891), vol. 68, 
p. 352 ff. 

Dr. G. Brown Goode, late Assistant Secretary of the United States National 
Museum, Washington, ‘Principles of Museum Administration,” 5.B. The 
Study Series; C. The Exhibition Series. United States National. Museum, Re- 
port (1897), vol. 1, p. 219. 4 

Sir W. H. Flower, late Director of the British Museum of Natural History, 
London, Essays on Museums (London, 1898), p. 21. 

Professor Patrick Geddes, Professor of Botany, University College, Dundee: 
President of Edinburgh School of Sociology, A Study in City Development, p. 164. 

L. Alma Tadema, R.A., Le Musée, vol. 5, p. 66. 

The Museums Journal, note on the Museum of Decorative Art, opened 1905 
in the Pavilion de Marsan of the Tuileries, Paris (January, 1906), p. 245. 

Revue Archéologique, Septembre-Octobre, 1905, Correspondence, p. 318. — 

New York Life, “Everybody knows that a large proportion of the contents 
of most of our art museums, even the very best of them, are a profound bore 
to the average intelligent visitor, who seeks to refresh his soul for a little while 
by the contemplation of these beautiful works.’”’ (January 11, 1906, p. 54.) 

Rev. J. G. Wood, naturalist and author, ‘““The Dulness of Museums,” Nine- 
teenth Century, vol. xx1 (1887), p. 394. 

Changes of Exhibition. 

Handbook to the Ruskin Museum, Sheffield, England (1900), p. xi. 

Li Chih, a Chinese writer of the 11th-12th century, author of the Hua p’in. 
“No more than three or four pictures by eminent artists should ever be hung 
in one room. After these have been enjoyed for four or five days, others should 
be substituted.” Quoted by Herbert A. Giles in his History of Chinese Pictorial 
Art, p. 134. 

Lionel Gast, editorial note, Burlington Magazine, no. 91, October, 1910, “One 
may even foresee a distant future when museums possessing almost all the great 
masterpieces of the past will never display all their treasures at once, but will 
bring them out a few at a time, giving to each its ideally perfect setting, and so 
avoid the dulled edge of familiarity.” 


APPENDIX 403 


exhibits would be raised and this would be of advantage 
to the public taste.! 

(2) The controlling purpose of selection would in all cases be 
to exhibit together such works as would promote or at 
least not interfere with each other’s appreciation by the 
public. This is not a decorative purpose aiming at the 
effectiveness of the galleries, but an artistic purpose, 
aiming at the effectiveness of the individual works dis- 
played. As hereafter stated under the principle of Har- 
mony, this artistic aim would in general be best attained 
by an ethnological and historical choice and grouping of 
objects. 

The aim to arrange scientifically and technically instructive 
exhibitions, while secondary, should be fulfilled to the utmost 
limit compatible with bringing out for the visitor the effect in- 
tended in each work by the artist.? 

(3) The principle does not propose to exclude either the pub- 
lic from the reserve galleries or scientific and technical stu- 
dents from the exhibition galleries, but to provide for each 
a place where their peculiar needs, on the one hand of ap~ 
preciation, on the other of abstract inquiry and practical 
training, can be more perfectly met than in galleries where 
both are served together. It aims not to do less but greater 
justice, both to the art of the past, by providing for its more 
perfect assimilation by the whole present public, and to sci- 
ence and to the art of the future, by enabling each in its 
own way to draw more profit from the treasures in museums. 


IV. Quauity 


In adding to its collections the primary aim of a museum of 
fine art should be the acquisition of works whose artistic qual- 
ity meets the test of responsible criticism; a secondary aim, the 


1 Matthew Arnold speaks of “inferior work . . . imbedding the first-rate 
work and clogging it, obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not infrequently, 
the high-wrought mood with which we leave it.” Preface to his anthology of 
Wordsworth’s Poems. (London, 1879.) 

2 Professor Charles Eliot Norton, of Harvard University, has noted that sci- 
entific attainment rather than artistic insight is too frequently the aim of study 
in museums: “... the risk of study in a museum is that instead of leading to 
the perception of beauty, the highest object it can have, it is too generally 
directed to merely scientific ends, that is, to the attainment of knowledge about 
the object, instead of to the perception and appreciation of that which makes 
the object in itself precious or interesting.” Letter to the New England History 
Teacher’s Association, October, 1904. 


404 APPENDIX 


formation of comprehensive exhibits. Every museum owes a 
special duty to local artists. 

Museums and the promotion of art. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously an artist adapts his creation to a definite environment. 
In offering another, museums aim at the security and publicity 
of the work. They are repositories of works of art either sep- 
arated from their native surroundings or lost to the world there- . 
in. Their twofold office in the economy of artistic culture is 
to preserve the art of the past alike from destruction and from 
oblivion. 

To inspire and direct artistic production is not the province 
of museums but that of life itself. Museums hold up the mirror of 
the past to the art of the present, as libraries do to its literature. 

Critical ability. Connoisseurship in its highest form implies 


1 Museums and LInving Art. Dr. Adolf Furtwingler, Kunstsammlungen aus 
alter und neuer Zeit (1899), p. 29. 

Dr. George Santayana, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University, The 
Life of Reason ; Reason in Art (1905), p. 209. 

Museums and Art Industry. Dr. Wilhelm Bode, General Director of the 
Royal Museums, Berlin, writes of “the expectation of a new development of 
craftsmanship upon the basis of antique models shared by us all about twenty- 
five or thirty years ago,”’ and concludes that “the essential condition of a perma- 
nent improvement in art industry and of its necessary support is the elevation 
of public taste.’ “This is one of the most important functions not only of mu- 
seums of art industry but of museums of art: for so long as the public looks at 
works of art only on the practical and not on the artistic side, all progress in 
museums and schools of art is of little worth.” ‘Functions of Museums of Art 
Industry,” Pan (1896), p. 124. 

Dr. Justus Brinckmann, Director of the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Hamburg. 
*“‘In so far as the exhibits offered to craftsmen by the museums (of art industry) 
were welcome and exploited as a convenient means of throwing on the market 
a succession of novelties, they perhaps often contributed to destroy artistic in- 
ventiveness and invite to a superficial eclecticism.” Guide to the Hamburg 
Museum of Art Industry (1894), p. v. 

René Jean writes as follows of the Museum of Decorative Art in the Tuileries 
(Pavilion de Marsan): ‘People have objected that the museum aims at the 
education of the people rather than that of the artisan: but what does this crit- 
icism amount to? The workman does not control the fashion, but submits to 
it. To cultivate the taste of the buyer cultivates that of the producer.” Le 
Musée, vol. 11, no. tv, pp. 195-96. See also the account of this museum with 
illustrations by Gaston Migeon, Gazette des Beaux Arts, July, 1905. 

See also Gustave Larroumet, late perpetual secretary of the Academy of Fine 
Arts, Paris, and Professor at the University of Paris, in the Annales Politiques 
et Littéraires, March 29, 1903: H. De Regnier, in the same journal, August 16, 
1903; R. de la Sizeranne, Revue des Deux Mondes (1899), p. 114 f; G. Elpi, writer, 
Italy, J Musei (Florence, 1902); Hans Dedekam, Director of the Nordenfjeldske 
Kunstindustrimuseum, Trondhjem, Norway. Norway, Museuwmskunde, vol. 1, 
p. 78; Sir W. M. Conway, former Slade Professor of Fine Arts, Cambridge, Eng- 
land, The Domain of Art, p. 24. 


APPENDIX 405 


an endowment and training capable of judging a work of art 
upon both internal and external evidence, both visually and by 
documents, both technically and scientifically, from the point 
of view of both maker and beholder, craftsman and historian.! 

Comprehensive collecting a secondary aim. Comprehensive col- 
lections are better for scientific instruction; choice collections 
are better in themselves. The aim of comprehensive collecting 
is incompatible both with the purpose to collect works of the 
first quality and the purpose to show them in the best way. For 
the ideal of completeness is impossible of realization without the 
acquisition of secondary material and generally of reproduc- 
tions; and from a little of every style the content of no one can 
be adequately gathered. 

The necessary incompleteness of any museum of the first 
order is evident, but not to be regretted.? 

The duty of museums to local art. The office of preserving good 
work from being forgotten is one which each museum can best 
perform for its own neighborhood. In the case of genw loci a 
museum has a duty not only to preserve but in a measure to 
make their reputations. It may consider itself not only the 
guardian but the advocate of indigenous art.’ 


V. Harmony 


In the main galleries of a museum those objects should be 
installed together which best aid each other’s appreciation. For 
this purpose, the arrangement of objects according to the peo- 
ples, times, and schools that have produced them is preferable 
to their classification by the arts they represent. 

For products of the same civilization efficiently aid each 
other’s appreciation by uniting to evoke the spirit which engen- 
dered them. The installation together of objects of the same 
art, or in the same materials, from different civilizations, while 
it may facilitate scientific and technical study does not con- 
tribute to their appreciation.4 

1 Bernard Berenson, Florence, Italy, “The Study of Italian Art’ (1902), Rudi- 
ments of Connoisseurship, p. 111 ff. 

2 Dr. Ernst Grosse. “‘For a museum such as we have in mind there is no 
more foolish extravagance than ‘inexpensive’ acquisitions of poor work with 
good names. Such we may gladly leave to those directors and amateurs whose 
highest ideal consists in ‘completing their collections.’”” Aufgabe und Einrich- 
tung einer Stédtischen Kunstsammlung, p. 6. 

8 A. Foulon De Vaulx, “Dans un Musée de Province,” Le Carnet (July, 1902), 
p. 55. Dr. Alfred Lichtwark, “The Immediate Duty,” Musewmskunde, vol 1, 1. 

1905. 
; 4 “a Justus Brinckmann. Guide to the Hamburg Museum of Art History (1894), 


406 APPENDIX 


VI. Reaitry 


Reproductions should not be exhibited with originals. 

The grounds for this rule are, first, the radical inferiority of 
most copies;! second, the right of the public to trust in what it 
sees without the vexing question, “Is this real or imitation?” 
third, the right of originals to exemption from this doubt, and 
from the companionship of radically inferior objects. 

Reproductions of works of art. The derivative character of 
reproductions should be clearly expressed by installing them 
in separate collections, which should be freely accessible.? 

Reproductions of environment. To install real works of art 
upon a reproduced background even if the latter is plainly a 
reproduction, both confuses the public and dishonors the work 
of art. A museum should remain frankly a museum, and never 
approximate a theatre, however its decoration be harmonized 
with its contents.’ 


p. vi. W. Stanley Jevons. Methods of Social Reform, p. 57. The Crown Prince 
and Crown Princess Frederic of Germany, Jahrbuch der Kéniglichen Preus- 
sischen Kunstsammlungen, vol. tv (1883), p. 121. Lieut.-Colonel G. T. Plunkett, 
C.B., Director of the Dublin Museum of Science and Art, Ireland, “How an 
Art Museum should be organised,” Magazine of Art, vol. 27, p. 448. 

Compare also the opinions on museum installation expressed by Frantz Jour- 
dain, Paul Adam, Maxime Maufra, Edmond Frank, H. Marechal, and Henri 
Martin, in Le Musée for January, 1907. 

1 Dr. George Santayana. “The Known Impossibility of Adequate Transla- 
tion,” The Sense of Beauty, p. 171. 

Professor A. Lichtwark: ‘‘From plaster casts and photographs I anticipate 
not much good and great disadvantages. Their number and their deficiencies 
mislead one into superficial contemplation. It is a sorry sight to see a class of 
girls or gymnasiasts before an exhibition of photographs of the masterpieces of 
Michael Angelo and of Raphael. 

“The flood of reproductions threatens to drown out the seeds of artistic cul- 
ture as soon as they show themselves. Whoever, after considerable previous 
study, arrives in Italy will recognise that he is everywhere inclined to overesti- 
mate the works of art that he does not know in reproduction, and that it is hard 
for him to get a fresh and new impression of the great masterpieces through the 
chaos of reproductions of which his head is full.”” Uebungen in der Betrachtung 
von Kunstwerken (Dresden, 1900), p. 33. Théophile Gautier has made a like 
observation, Voyage en Italie, p. 204. 

2 “Tt goes without saying that it is absolutely essential to avoid mingling 
(as is still done in many museums) originals and copies, antique marbles and 
casts. Such a confusion cannot but mislead uninstructed visitors, and blunt the 
sense of beauty, through putting lifeless copies on a plane with original works.” 
L. Réau, “‘L’organization des Musées,”’ Revue de Synthése Historique (1909), p. 19. 

’ J. Guadet, professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, Eléments et Théorie 
de l’ Architecture, pp. 312 ff. Edmond Haraucourt, Director of the Cluny Mu- 
seum, Paris. Le Musée, vol. u, p. 73. Dr. J. Lessing, late Director of the Royal 


APPENDIX 407 


VII. Servicze 


A museum of fine art should be active in exhibition as well 
as in acquisition; seeking primarily to promote public apprecia- 
tion of its collections by attracting and instructing visitors; and 
secondarily, to increase and diffuse scientific and technical 
knowledge of them through research and by aid to students. 

The life of a museum consists not only in growth but also and 
chiefly in influence. The Thorwaldsen Museum, which does 
not grow at all, is, nevertheless, a permanent vital force in 
European civilization. That the possessions of a museum should 
increase is desirable; that they should win new friends is essen- 
tial. 

To these ends the museum should command the services of 
men competent not only to effect the proper: preservation and 
advantageous exhibition of the collections and to give wise 
advice regarding accessions, but to aid both in their apprecia- 
tion and in their investigation. 

Service to visitors. The public whose welfare is served by a 
museum should be attracted to visit it by the charm of the build- 
ing and its surroundings, by liberal conditions of admission, 
by arrangements for comfort and convenience; they- should be 
interested in the collections by their advantageous installation, 
their sympathetic interpretation and the opportunity to aid 
in spreading their influence. Concerts, indoors in winter and 
outdoors in summer, offer a means of attracting visitors and 
occupying intervals devoted to rest. 

In particular a museum of art should, as far as is practicable, 
be opened free to the public daily during daylight hours. Among 
Kunstgewerbe Museum, Berlin: “‘ Now-a-days, the demand is often made that 
not only a general conception of a certain epoch of culture shall be given, but 
that things shall be installed to look exactly as they used to. Gentlemen, this 
will not do. Under certain conditions, it is possible: in provincial collections, 
for example, when a whole interior is shown: but even then one wall must be 
left out in order to look in, for visitors can hardly actually enter. But for large 
museums, nothing remains but to adhere in a general way to motives of a cer- 
tain epoch. In this respect much may be done.” Report of the Mannheim Confer- 
ence of Museum Officials, p. 109. Joseph Folnesicz, Kustos at the Kunstge- 
werbe Museum, Vienna, Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, vol. v1 (1903), pp. 57 ff. 

1 The Mannheim Conference of Museum Officials (September, 1903), the first 
congress of continental museum officials yet held, was called to consider the 
question: “How shall the influence of museums upon the people generally be 


increased?” ’ 
Charles H. Caffin, “Museums and their Possibilities of Greater Public 


Usefulness,” International Studio, “American Studio Talk” (October, 1903), 
p- clxiii. 


408 APPENDIX 


desirable accommodations may be mentioned cloak and retiring 
rooms, convenient and ample for exceptional crowds; a public 
telephone, an information agency, and a restaurant; handbooks 
guiding the visitor through the collections, and catalogues, 
photographs and other reproductions describing and illustrat- 
ing them; a bulletin chronicling the history of the institution 
and its possessions; printed information about the exhibits in all 
the galleries; oral information by lectures on the collections and 
guidance through them;! committees and societies for purposes 
bearing upon the collections, including the foundation of branch 
exhibitions, to be formed under the auspices of the museum, and 
working from it as a centre. 

The public service of a museum of fine arts need not be limited 
to its own collections. A chartered guardian of fine art may 
fitly lead in efforts to preserve whatever artistic resources its 
neighborhood possesses, undertaking to register, study, and 
make known any local treasures of art which their public or 
private possessors offer for the purpose; recording them by 
description and photography, gathering and interpreting data 
about them and arranging for public access to them. In accept- 
ing this wider duty a museum would usurp no control over local 
art, past or present, but would remain within its proper sphere 
as a conservative force, sheltering certain works of art within 
its walls and imparting information as to others without. 

Service to students. A work of fine art like any other product 
of man’s creative skill is a datum both for science and for the 
arts concerned in its production. It constitutes a fact.of which 
men of science should take due cognizance in their efforts to — 
add to knowledge. It constitutes, further and therefore, a 
pedagogic means of which teachers of related subjects should 
make use for the advantage of their pupils. Again, as an ex- 
ample of a certain branch of human skill, the practitioners of 
that art should make use of it in the development of their own 
_and others’ creative abilities. A museum should facilitate the 

use of its collections for all these aims. In particular, a museum 
may offer the services of its officers and the use of its galleries 
and department rooms for scientific and technical lectures 
upon its collections, and accord free admission and other special 
privileges to teachers and students. 


* Professor A. Furtwingler, Kunstsammlungen aus alter und neuer Zeit, p. 27. 

The discussion of this question with reports from those who have acted as 
guides in the museums of Frankfort, Munich and Berlin, occupies pp. 146-84 
in the Report of the Mannheim Conference of Museum Officials. 


APPENDIX 409 


The foregoing seven principles may be summarized as fol- 
lows: 

Museum buildings should be marked by their quiet design 
(1), and should consist of units of moderate size (II), each con- 
taining primary and secondary galleries (III). The collections 
should aim at excellence rather than comprehensiveness (IV), 
and should be arranged by peoples and epochs instead of arts 
(V), reproductions being shown separately (VI). The museum 
should be active in attracting visitors, in interpreting objects 
exhibited, and in aiding scientific and technical students (VII). 


1 On the various subjects of this paper compare also: 

F. A. Bather, ““The Functions of Museums: a Resurvey,”’ Popular Science 
Monthly (January, 1904), pp. 210-18. 

R. L. Hartt, “Art Galleries for the Plain Man,” World’s Work, November, 
1907. 

F. W. Coburn, “The New Museum of Fine Arts” (Boston), New England 
Magazine, January, 1908. 

Burlington Magazine, London, editorial articles: “Museums” (September 
15, 1908); ‘“‘Reorganization at South Kensington, I”? (December 10, 1908). 

Dr. Theodor Volbehr, Director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Magde- 
burg, “Die Ausstellungspflichten unserer Museen,’ Die Woche, no. 50 (12 De- 
cember, 1908), p. 2149. 

L. F. Day, “How to make the most of a Museum,” Journal of the Society of 
Aris, vol. 56 (January 10, 1908), no. 2377. 


B 
MUSEUM REGISTRY OF PUBLIC ART 


I. MUSEUMS OF ART AND THE CONSERVATION OF 
MONUMENTS ! 


Reaistry, Stupy, PusBLictty 


CONSERVATION is an essential function of museums. By the 
dictionary a museum is a building devoted to the collection, 
preservation, and exhibition of works of nature or art; and in 
common usage the persons in charge are called curators or care- 
takers. 

The need of concerted effort to care for instructive and beau- 
tiful objects outside museums has been felt and met only with- 
in the past century. Beginning with the French law of 1792, 
relating to the destruction or removal of historic or artistic 
treasures, the movement is now represented by a large body 
of similar measures in many countries; by territorial invento- 
ries — those of the German and other governments; by associa- 
tions local and general— among others the Heimathschutz 
unions now multiplying in Germany, the National Trust in 
England, the Scenic and Historic Preservation Society in this 
country; and by national boards — among others the Italian 
Uffizi regionali per la Conservazione dei Monumenti, the French 
Commission des Monuments Historiques (1837), and the de- 
partmental commissions established in France under the law 
of April 24, 1906. 

The purpose of the present essay is to recommend to museums 
in America an extension of function carrying with it the leader- 
ship of such a movement in this country. The new office pro- 
‘posed to them is that of public information regarding outside 
objects germane to their purposes. Its possible scope includes all 
neighboring objects of public interest, whether instructive or 
beautiful, natural or artificial. The argument is here addressed 
directly to museums of art, but offered also, mutatis mutandis, 
for the consideration of museums of natural science. Doubt- 

1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums 


(1909), vol. m1. Also published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts (Bos- 
ton, February, 1910), vol. vm, no. 43. 


APPENDIX | 411 


less museums of history also might usefully supplement the 
efforts now making here and there throughout the country to 
preserve our memorials of antiquity. Let American museums 
of art no longer confine their interest within their own walls. 
Let each take its neighborhood for its province, acquiring and 
imparting information about any local works of art, public or 
private, whose owners may offer them for the purpose. A know- 
ledge of what we have is the necessary and often sufficient con- 
dition of its preservation; and museums may thus indirectly 
make the circle of their conservative activity complete. 

Aside from certain conspicuous instances, the Hancock House 

in Boston, the L’Enfant plan of Washington and others, there 
has as yet been comparatively little occasion in America for 
efforts to protect our artistic inheritance. The occasion will 
surely come. Let it find the art museums of the country organ- 
ized in defence of its artistic monuments. Let the museum of 
each locality become a rallying point for such a movement. 
Where no museums yet exist, let them be founded for this pur- 
pose only, until a building be needed as a new anchorage for 
such of their outside charges as are set adrift, or for other objects 
like them. Whatever a museum may accomplish in gathering 
and spreading information about the monuments of the region 
will be so much gained. Were the data all held in the drawer of 
-a desk, time might make them priceless memorials. 
Such a registry of local art may properly, easily, and advan- 
_tageously be carried on by museums of art. Properly, because 
it is a work implying no responsibility beyond that of acquiring 
and giving information; and the information of the public on 
matters of fine art lies within the charter purposes of every 
museum. Easily, because every museum has already at its dis- 
position for its own purposes an apparatus of registration, and 
a more or less numerous staff of persons competent to use it. 
Advantageously, because the conservation of monuments is a 
work of eternal vigilance better intrusted to the initiative of a 
permanent institution than to voluntary societies. 

In a word, the present proposal makes the whole duty of 
museums of fine art one of watch and ward, and not ward alone 
as hitherto. Continuing guardian of its own treasures only, the 
museum would be brought into relation as visitor with every- 
thing of like kind about it. More specifically the museum would 
undertake to prepare and maintain an inventory of works of art 
outside its walls which are interesting and accessible to its public, and 
to promote the enjoyable and profitable study of them by all. — 


412 APPENDIX 


Pa 


In pursuance of this purpose, the museum would schedule, 
investigate, and popularize any specimens of fine art in its 
neighborhood which the owners might offer and the museum 
think worthy. So registered, they would be certified as public 
exhibits, or as available for public exhibition under conditions 
agreed on between the owner and the museum, the owner re- 
taining entire control and the museum accepting no responsi- 
bility. 

In detail the three duties of visitation would be the following: 

(1) The accurate and complete registry, by description, meas- 
urement, photography, and otherwise, of such buildings, sculp- 
tures, paintings, etc., in the locality as the museum might con- 
sider of public interest from an artistic point of view, and the 
owners either already treated, or might be willing to treat, in 
greater or less measure as public exhibits. The foremost class 
of such objects would be works of art belonging to the munici- 
pality, commonwealth, or nation, which doubtless should all 
be inventoried, however unequal their artistic merit. In the 
case of objects privately owned, the museum would wish to pro- 
ceed carefully and with the advice of the best organized opinion 
in the city on the various arts. 

(2) The artistic and historical study of the specimens so 
scheduled, the accumulation of data about them and the artists, 
and the publication of results upon occasion. This study might 
lead at times to the recommendation of measures looking to 
the preservation of the scheduled objects and their utilization 
as works of art. 

(3) The management of the exhibition and exposition of reg- 
istered objects to the public, either in place, or, in the case of 
movable objects, in the museum. The museum would under- 
take to aid the public in seeing registered objects intelligently 
by publishing lists or other accounts of them, organizing visits 
thereto, and in other ways; and in the case of works shown on 
private premises, to provide such protective means (custodians, 
etc.) as it would employ in its own galleries and grounds. 

The visitation of public monuments as thus understood inter- — 
feres with no existing agency for the promotion of art, but use- 
fully supplements the work of all. Historical societies and 
unions for scenic preservation are founded in the interest of old 
association and natural beauty, not artistic quality. Schools 
and leagues of art, village improvement societies, municipal 
art commissions and national art associations are creative 
sources. What these achieve the museum will help to conserve 


APPENDIX 413 


by making it known. The museum will be the means through 
which the country will take account and advantage of its en- 
richment in material products of the imagination. . 

Where data are already complete and the facilities of exhibi- 
tion ample, the museum will need only to record the fact in its 
registers. Doubtless municipal and professional archives exist 
with whose aid a close copy of Independence Hall in Philadel- 
phia could be constructed were the original destroyed; doubt- 
less also the building is publicly shown and commented upon 
as fully as practicable. But what photographs, technical de- 
scriptions, or historical documents now represent the lost Hunt 
frescoes in the Albany Capitol? Do data exist, and where are 
they accessible, that would insure to those who have never seen 
David d’Angers’ statue of Jefferson at the Capitol in Washing- 
ton a proper estimate of that work? Do even sculptors gener- 
ally know of its existence? Plainly the record of our public 
artistic riches, to say nothing of the private collections occa- 
sionally shown publicly, is fragmentary and inaccessible; and 
most of it, moreover, is unauthoritative. So it might remain, 
however far the schemes now on foot for the preservation of an- 
tiquities and scenery and for the promotion of art were to be 
developed. The place of visitor to public monuments is empty 
for the museums of the country to fill. 

Five good results might be anticipated from the acceptance 
by museums of this new duty. 

(1) The museum would be connected with current artistic 
production permanently and healthily. Always on the watch 
for any new and important acquisition of the neighborhood, it 
would fully record the origin, character, and purpose of the 
work before any of the facts were forgotten. Becoming inter- 
preter and advocate of living art, the museum would nourish 
but not pamper it by winning instead of granting it commissions. 

(2) The museum would appear in its true light as purely an 
agency of conservation, offering asylum to waifs and strays of 
art, but equally interested in the security of works still in their 
places. Zeal to preserve artistic treasures within gallery walls 
does not permit indifference to the fate of others without. To 
have no eyes for the present is to impugn one’s sense for the 
past, and, conversely, to concern one’s self with art still alive 
is to deepen one’s comprehension of its remains. A museum 
active on behalf of the monuments of its neighborhood ac- 
knowledges itself not the home but the refuge of the objects of 
art it shelters. 


414 APPENDIX 


(3) Architecture, the third and chief of the material arts, 
would be brought within the circle of museum interests. Paint- 
ing and sculpture alone (with their minor derivatives) can be 
represented in exhibition galleries by mtact original works; 
architecture only by fragments or reproductions. A large share 
of the more important monuments of any neighborhood being 
works of architecture, the museum, by undertaking their regis- 
try and publicity, would complete its representation of the 
material arts. The architects on museum boards would find 
opportunities of service hitherto lacking. 

Geology among the sciences presents on this point an analogy 
with architecture among the arts. By undertaking the registry 
and publicity of instructive natural features in their neighbor- 
hood, museums of science would for the first time represent 
geology otherwise than by fragments and reproductions. 

(4) The proposal adds to the present museum what might 
be called an out-door department. The Nordiska Museum in 
Stockholm has a park (Skansen) filled with examples of old 
Swedish architecture, which has been a successful adjunct to its 
in-door collections, and has found imitators. As visitor, a mu- 
seum would give and call attention to outside objects without 
waiting for their withdrawal from use. 

(5) The scheme would insure to the museum a permanent 
source of enrichment. A probable result of the registry and 
publicity of outside objects under museum auspices would be 
their frequent transfer to the museum for permanent enjoyment 
by the public. 

Finally, the plan should commend itself, first, to museums, 
because it offers the opportunity of a novel and important pub- 
lic service; second, to other owners of objects of art, because 
museum registry of a work would give it distinction, increase 
its influence, and safeguard its future; and third, to the people 
at large, because the museum would henceforth be their repre- 
sentative, alert to see that all interesting and accessible works 
of art in their neighborhood should be utilized for public bene- 
fit. 

To similar ends let museums of science and of history add to 
their function of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting instruc- 
tive or interesting objects, the office of recording, studying, and 
making known like objects in their neighborhood. 





Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 
Portrait oF SaMueL ADAMS 
J. 8S. Copley (1737-1815) 
Lent to the Museum by the City. The Colonial leader 
is represented addressing the British Governor of Massa- 
chusetts on the day after the Boston Massacre of 1770. 


He points to the Charter of Massachusetts on the table 
before him. 


II. THE REGISTRY OF PUBLIC ART AT THE 
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON 


In the paper on ‘Museums and the Conservation of Monu- 
ments” read at the annual meeting of the American Associa- 
tion of Museums in Philadelphia, May 12, 1909, and reprinted 
above, it was proposed that each art museum in America should 
undertake to prepare and maintain an inventory of the works 
of art outside its walls which are interesting and accessible to 
its public and to promote the enjoyable and profitable study of 
them by all. In pursuance of this suggestion the Museum of 
Fine Arts in Boston, in the following October, announced its 
purpose to undertake such a registry in a circular addressed 
to a number of persons responsible as guardians or owners for 
important buildings, statues, pictures, and other works of art 
in public places in Boston, the list including representatives of 
the United States, state and city governments, colleges, and 


416 APPENDIX 


religious and artistic organizations. The announcement was 
cordially received, the only doubt expressed by any of those 
replying being whether the objects in their keeping merited this 
recognition. The Museum was quite prepared to find that this 
doubt was justified in some cases and quite prepared as well to 
find it not justified in others. The pressure of work incident to 
opening the new Museum building in November prevented’ for 
a number of weeks any further active effort in establishing the 
Registry. The initial step in the realization of a purpose com- 
pletely new to most people must consist largely in verbal ex- 





Public Library, Boston 


GoLp MEDAL PRESENTED TO GEORGE WASH- 
INGTON BY CONGRESS IN COMMEMORATION OF 
THE EVACUATION oF BOosTON. 


P.S. B. du Vivier (1730-1819) 


planations of the plan, and such explanations are very costly 
in time and trouble, demanding much correspondence and 
conversation. Within a few months active steps were taken to 
fulfil the design and a report upon the results reached was 
presented at the meeting of the Association in 1910. 

The comments of the press were distinctly favorable. There 
seemed to be a general feeling of satisfaction, if not of relief, 
at the thought that a class of permanent institutions already 
devoted to the widest interests of the public should have es- 
poused the cause of the people in this necessary particular. 
Three months after the meeting of the Association at which 
the plan was first proposed the ‘‘Museums Journal”’ of Eng- 
land, in reviewing a book on “The Care of Natural Monu- 


APPENDIX 417 


ments”’ by the director of the Dantzig Museum, expressed its 
_ surprise that Dr. Conwentz made no mention of museums, 
among the agencies of their protection, continuing: “It cer- 
tainly seems to us that the local museum of the district would 
form a very fitting headquarters for work of this character,” 
and concluding: “Not to urge the point too far, the least sug- 
gestion we can make is that the officials of our museums should 
without delay get into touch with the nearest local association 
for the preservation of natural monuments.’ The same journal, 
in reviewing the “Proceedings” of the Association in the issue 





Pubiic Library, Boston 


SILVER VASE PRESENTED BY CITIZENS OF 
Boston to DANIEL WEBSTER IN RECOGNITION 
OF HIS DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTION, OcTo- 
BER 12, 1835. 


of March, 1910, refers to the plan of the museum registry of 
public art as in line with this recommendation of its own and 
heartily welcomes the suggestion, adding that “It may fall on 
more fruitful ground on the other side of the Atlantic, where 
museums have a more open field.”’ In Germany the Kunstchrontk 
of May 13th, 1910, spoke of the plan as an especially praise- 
worthy innovation in museum methods and went on to say: 
“It would be a real blessing if this novelty should be taken up 
also in other States of the Union.” A private letter from Dr. 
Grosse, director of the Freiburg Museum, expressed his thor- 
ough-going sympathy with the proposal and the views on which 
it is based. The New York “Nation” spoke of the Registry 
as a new service “which might well be adopted by museums of 
all kinds. Like most new ideas this is a simple and obvious ex- 
tension of the usual duties of a museum.” This coincidence of 
favorable opinion is of good augury. It indicates that the pro- 


418 APPENDIX 


posed function of the Registry of Public Art may open to mu- 
seums an opportunity of wide usefulness. 

A circular of information lately issued makes known the work 
in the following words: 


The Registry of Local Art of this Museum is a card index of works of sculp- 
ture, painting, architecture, and the minor arts accessible to the public of Bos- 
ton and Massachusetts, with a file of related documents. 

The purpose of this inventory is to keep the artistic inheritance of the people 
before the public mind. For this purpose an inventory is indispensable. The 
people must know what they have in order to give it due attention 





Faneuil Hall, Boston 


Bust or JouN ApAms, SECOND PRESIDENT 
OF THE UNITED STATES 
J.B. Binon (1818) 


With the Washington medal, this bust is a memorial of 
the intimate relation between France and the United 
States at the beginning of our history. 


At present no comprehensive inventory of the public art of our community 
exists. The materials for it either are lacking or are scattered in municipal his- 
tories, guide-books, exhibition catalogues and periodicals, or the records of 
boards, societies, and individuals. By offering a permanent, appropriate, and 
convenient place for the preservation of a descriptive list of works of art erected 
in public places or otherwise open to public view, the Registry of Local Art aims 
not to duplicate, but to supplement, the work of all organizations codperating 
in the artistic adornment of our cities, or the public exhibition of fine art. It 


“sSUIp[Ing a3a][0D 24} Jo ‘ozIs UL JOU Ysno0y} “joe Ul SUIPUBUIUIOD {sour 9, J, 
(98-881) Uospsoyory *H *H 
aquvX GuvAuvy “TIVE, YHATS 





420 APPENDIX 


hopes to be regarded as a section of their archives, in the sense of a progressive 
record of what they do to put means of artistic enjoyment within reach of the 
public generally. 

It is designed to keep the Registry open to public use in the office of the Sec- 
retary of the Museum, and to record its progress in the Museum Bulletin. 





InTAGLIO: ‘‘ GIRLHOOD”’ 
~ Grace Hooper 
The label reads : 


Here 
where her work was done 
let this intaglio 
bring to our memory 


GRACE HOOPER 


artist and teacher 


Many memorial inscriptions, not always so musically 
expressed, are found in the Boston schools. 


The Registry will be grateful for notice of any works of art or collections of 
art which are, or may become, accessible to the Massachusetts public, and will 
index and carefully preserve any information and documents sent. 

The Registry will also compile, edit, and supervise the illustration of lists 
of works of art like those which it has for several years prepared at the request 
of the Art Commission of Boston as supplements to their reports. For this labor 





“epeuey jo ueoOysIY ‘(E68I-Gagl) UeUIyIeg siouviy jo ALoulsul ul poyoorq 
("  -OG81) youaty “QO -d 
AATHO NVICNJ NV DONILNEUSAYdHY OTTOVEINI HLIM Vudaxy 


puod ay} Guriyoo)..aa0 hnnying voinune 





422 APPENDIX 


it would expect a compensation of five dollars a printed page and the travelling 
expenses incurred. 

The methods of the work are very simple. A representative 
of the Museum calls by appointment at the public building, 
church or other place where there are objects to register and 
takes careful notes. These notes are supplemented later by 
further visits, by consultation of books in the Museum library 
or with officers of the Museum. They have sought to include 
as many as possible of the following data recorded as exactly 
and fully as possible: 

Place of the object; owner; title (dates if a portrait); artist (with 
dates); description (including material, measurements, decora- 
tive elements, an interpretation of motives, a verbatim, litera- 
tim, and lineally correct transcription of any inscriptions or 
any signatures of artists, and references to related works of art 
or to literary sources); history (whether gift or commission; date 
and circumstances of erection; removals, restoration, and per- 
sons concerned). 

To supplement these notes it has often proved possible to 
obtain photographs of the objects or other documentary mate- 
rial. A set of measured drawings representing Park Street 
Church before the alterations of 1914 has been deposited with 
the Registry for safekeeping -by the architects. Another set 
representing an architectural survey of the Old South Meeting 
House has been deposited by the Old South Association. A 
third set representing Saint Paul’s Cathedral has been given 
to the Registry by the Boston Society of Architects. 

The data gathered by the Registry are preserved in a triple 
card index and a file of folders referred to from the cards. Of 
the three cards written for each object, each contains the same 
three items of information, namely, the owner, the object, and 
the artist. On one, the name of the owner comes first, on an- 
other the name of the object, and on the third, the artist’s name. 
The owner cards are arranged together in alphabetical order 
as an owner list; the object cards as an object list, and the artist 
cards as an artist list. These cards are three and’ seven-eighths 
inches high and. five and seven-eighths inches long. The illus- 
trations show the three cards devoted to one object. 

The further data gathered about any object registered are 
preserved in a folder. The title of the folder is written on the 
owner card and underlined. A notice in the drawer containing 
the index directs the reader to look at the owner card of any 
object for the underlined reference to further data. The folders © 


State House, Boston: Grand Staircase Hall, 
Memorial to the Army Nurses of the Civil 
War; by Bela L. Pratt. 

"State House”, 1914, Page 45. E 
Army Nurses of the Civil War, Memorial to. 


bel 
by Bela L. Pratt. 

See Massachusetts, Cammonwealth of. State 
House, Boston: Grand Steircase Hall. 















See Massachusetts, Commonwealth of. State 
House, Boston: Grand Staircase Hall. 
Memorial to the Army Nurses of the Oivil 


War 


424 APPENDIX 


are kept in the usual upright letter-filing drawers arranged 
alphabetically according to their titles. 

In case the Registry comes into possession of any list, writ- 
ten or printed, containing objects which it is desired to regis- 
ter, the list is filed in a folder and an owner card is made out 
with the title of the folder underlined. In case the objects in 
the list are of various ownership, the list is registered by its 
title on a card headed “Owners, Various.” The entry on the 
owner card is then repeated on cards headed “Objects, Vari- 
ous,” and “Artists, Various ’”’*(unless the objects are the work 
of one) in the object and artist index. Any important object 
in such a list may thereafter, when leisure offers, be given its 
own triple set of cards — owner, object, and artist — the owner 
card containing an underlined reference to the folder as on the 
general card. 

Newspaper cuttings form an important source of information 
for the Registry. They are most conveniently filed in folders 
instead of a scrap-book. An owner card is made out with the 
title of the folder underlined; or, in the case of several owners, 
the reference is added to the card headed “‘Owners, Various.” 

Projects for artistic monuments are registered with references 
to the cuttings or other data about them as if they were already 
carried out, but with the word “ Projected’’ added to the entry. 

By these methods the Registry can inventory not only such 
objects as there may be time to inspect and record, but also 
in a collective way objects too numerous to register individually 
at the moment. A registry once brought up to date by these 
summary entries may be amplified and kept abreast of the cur- 
rent artistic development of its neighborhood without the devo- 
tion of more than occasional hours. 

It has been the experience of the Boston Registry that full and 
authoritative data about a public work of art are very easy to 
obtain at the time of its installation. The recognition of the 
project by an important institution is welcome to all those en- 
gaged in it. Cordial relations between the museum and the 
artists concerned are a notable result. Although devoted by 
its immediate sphere to the art of the past, a museum, through 
this external function, comes into a wholesome relation to the 
art of the present. 

It is also the Boston experience that full and authoritative 
data about works of art installed long ago in public places are 
hardly to be obtained by any inquiry. The scheme of items 
above outlined can only very partially be filled out for most 


APPENDIX 425 


older monuments. The memory of many facts has faded out, 
and such records as may have been made can no longer be un- 
earthed. This experience is a valid argument for the establish- 
ment of Registries. With this forgetfulness about public monu- 
ments goes ignorance and neglect of them. A record of them 
will undoubtedly help them to accomplish their purpose of per- 
manent public enjoyment and advantage. 

Since the Registry was begun, Harvard College-has completed 
an inventory of the works of art in its possession and has placed 
a copy with the Registry. The manuals of the State House, the 
Public Library, and pamphlets or lists compiled by a number 
of churches and other institutions, including the Boston Athe- 
num, are also contained in the Registry files. 

The chief work of inspection and record has been carried out 
in the service of the Art Commission of the City, for which the 
’ Registry has prepared a series of lists of city-owned works of 
art, at present complete. 

On the basis of these various records, the Registry hopes in 
the near future to issue a Handbook of Public Art in and about 
Boston. The pamphlet would consist chiefly of illustrations, 
a few lines of text giving important facts about each. The worth 
that such handbooks might eventually come to possess for all 
greater cities is suggested by one of the paragraphs in Bishop 
Berkeley’s “‘Querist”’: “Whether pictures and statues are not 
in fact so much treasure? And whether Rome and Florence 
would not be poor towns without them?” An illustrated review 
of public art at once apprizes us of what has been done and sug- 
gests what might still be done. In American communities, to 
whose life the imagination has not yet had opportunity to add 
its commentary, the second function may easily prove the more 
important one. 

A Registrar is of the type of workman described negatively 
by Dr. Johnson as a “‘harmless drudge.” Any one elsewhere who 
aspires to follow the Boston precedent must be prepared to find 
that others will commend his work in theory and yawn over 
it in practice. Yet the positive value that Dr. Johnson was too 
sensitive to claim for the labor of the lexicographer clearly be- 
longs also to the minor field of the registry of public art. Let 
the Registrar remember that what he plants and waters is a 
tree of the most deliberate and uneventful growth whose full 
foliage only a later generation will take pleasure in and profit by. 


C 
OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPEAN MUSEUMS 


Tue American visitor to one of the older museums in Europe 
meets an atmosphere that has never existed in museums at 
home. The earliest museums sprang out of the collector’s im- 
pulse — that of safekeeping; those established after the World’s 
Fair of 1851, out of the exhibitor’s impulse — that of publicity. 
In 1840, the poet Southey justified bequeathing his collections 
for sale by the remark: ‘‘ Put in a museum nobody sees them.” ? 
In 1912, the painter Detaille bequeathed his house and con- 
tents to the city of Paris to be made a museum.’ In the in- 
terval, museums had developed from storehouses to expositions. 
To the duty of conserving what is worth seeing, they had added | 
that of getting it well seen. They no longer serve only the few, 
able to see for themselves; they serve also the many, unable 
to see without aid. Even the older museums have of late ex- 
changed their mainly passive attitude toward the public for a 
more active réle. 

Under the pressure of the double responsibility of keeping 
_ and showing, museums have come to magnify their office. 
Their growth and their new public importance have led them 
to treat their buildings and the installations within as independ- 
ent works of art. This tendency the future must correct. A 
clear distinction exists between the purpose to exhibit works 
of art installed in a building and the purpose to make works 
of art of the building and the installations. The essential pur- 
pose of a museum is the first. A museum building may be a 
monument of architecture and its installations achievements 
of decorative art only in so far as both are compatible with ex- 
hibiting to the best advantage the objects so sheltered and 
arranged. It is the servitor of objective art as other public 
buildings are not, and should express this difference of function 
in its design. Museums as expositions should become again 
the simple media for voices from the past which they once were 


1 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Association of Museums, 
vol. vu. (1913.) 

2 H. Crabb Robinson, Diary, vol. m1, p. 187. 

3 Press despatch, December, 1912. 


APPENDIX 427 


as magazines; albeit with a care to be transparent media such 
as they never have been. 

The present transitional stage is one of museum self-impor- 
tance; the definitive stage one of self-forgetfulness. The future 
will surely approve of external and internal simplicity in a 
‘museum building. Age may mellow crudeness of surface and 
dignify plainness of line, but age will not restore to museum 
galleries light sacrificed to a fagade, nor lessen the disharmony 
between decorations and contents different in spirit. The sym- 
metrical architecture of one of the newest of European museums 
results in the same lighting and the same decorative forms in 
galleries of modern sculpture and of Egyptian antiquities: In 
two others, also built for their present purpose, the needs of the 
exterior have given the upper galleries windows reaching to the 
floor, but only partly to the ceiling, blinding the visitor and 
unnaturally lighting the objects. In the study of newer collec- 
tions generally, obtrusive gallery decoration is something to 
fight against. The gratuitous burden of color and form in walls, 
floor, and ceiling has its share in the fatigue of a museum visit. 
By comparison, the reserve of an old palace like the Brera is 
an immense relief. 

The future will surely approve also the arrangement of objects 
to enhance their individual effect instead of their collective 
effect. Museum acquisitions are commonly fragments, de- 
signed for other companion pieces than their chance associates 
in museum galleries. The attempt to combine them cleverly 
into a decorative scheme stands on the artistic level of an old- 
time crazy-quilt. The future belongs not to the panoramic but 
the anthologic conception of both museum arrangement and 
museum visiting. Each of the artistic fragments preserved in 
a museum gallery has its individual aim, and it is for the un- 
veiling of these aims to the after-world as an anthology of art 
that they are permanently shown. Reviewing them panorami- 
cally by a passing glance soon surfeits; and as a form of recrea- 
tion or improvement in no way warrants the expenditure now 
devoted to museum acquisitions and their display. The sep- 
arate inspection of museum objects for the individual content 
of each does repay, and fully, for all that our museums cost to 
establish and maintain; but this anthologic visiting the pano- 
ramic arrangement defeats. Cases symmetrically placed but 
shadowing each other, exhibits pieced out with inferior exam- 
ples or with reproductions, backgrounds varying from room 
to room without corresponding enhancement of the contents, 


428 APPENDIX 


represent some of the costly ways in which even the newest 
museums maintain the panoramic ideal. 

If not designed to keep up interest in a panorama of rooms, 
the perpetual variety of wall coloring, found in many newer 
museums, would appear uncalled for on any grounds. There is 
one tone of color, a light gray-brown or dull yellow-gray which 
both experience and reason approve for many if not most mu- 
seum purposes. Professor Mébius has proposed it as a stand- 
ard.1 A creamy gray is favorably noted in the report of the 
commission sent to Europe by the Museum of Fine Arts in Bos- 
ton, as the color often given the walls of his interiors by Peter 
de Hooch.? The choice of dull gray-brown for the walls of the 
Vestibule Room (I) of the National Gallery made that apart- 
ment to me the most agreeable in general tone among all those 
seen last summer. The fact that gold is the accepted frame for 
our pictures argues for the use of dull yellow-gray as a general 
background. For this tone of color may be regarded as derived 
from gold by such a darkening and dulling as would balance 
the greater extent of surface covered. A like general tone is 
illustrated in rough plaster or common burlaps and could on 
that account be adopted experimentally through a whole mu- 
seum at less cost than any other. Both these materials possess 
also the fine structure or play of light and shade which makes 
the carving or graining of a frame a congenial setting for the 
intricacies of a work of art. 

Once free from the monumental ideal without and the pano- 
ramic ideal within, modern museums would become the servi- 
tors of their contents which they were founded to be; but they 
would still be far from efficient servitors. They would be media 
for voices from the past, but not transparent media without 
changes obviously necessary in their methods of lighting, of 
giving information about their exhibits, and of aiding the visi- 
tor in other ways. 

A museum is a place for the use of the eyes. The word “‘visi- 
tor’ derives from the visual powers, and their economy is a 


1 Karl Mobius, ‘‘ Die Zweckmissige Einrichtung grosser Museen,” Deutsche 
Rundschau, vol. 68 (1891), p. 356. ‘Dull gray-yellow has the advantage over a 
white background that it is not blinding, does not tire the eye by reflecting light 
too strongly. It differs from a red, bright yellow, green, blue, violet or black 
background in that it does not produce any colored after images, any train of 
complementary tints in the eye to disturb the pure and full perception of the 
exhibited objects.” 

2 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Communications to the Trustees, vol. 11 (1905), 
p. 54. 


APPENDIX 429 


prime desideratum of museum methods. At present they are 
lavishly wasted. Light is often provided in right quantity, but 
generally also in wrong direction. Yet direction and not quan- 
tity of light is the chief element in good seeing. The eye is most 
sensitive to form and color under a moderate illumination only. 
Woods in the rain are full of gradations unnoted in sunshine. 
But if just dazzled by a burst of sun, the eye will not perceive 
them. The visitor to modern galleries is at frequent intervals 
dazzled by glares of light, now from the ceiling, now from win- 
dows, and now reflected from the surface of pictures or the 
glass of cases. Much of the illumination is directed upon him- 
self instead of upon the objects. Could the resulting ocular 
anzesthesias be forestalled, his seeing powers would be greatly 
increased, one is inclined to say multiplied. In a measure glare 
can be provided against by curtaining the light-openings, by 
making ceiling lights narrower or higher, and by raising the sills 
of windows. Of the latter expedient it does not appear that 
adequate advantage has yet been taken. A window restricted 
to the upper third of the wall of a gallery of ordinary dimensions 
would not be directly in the visitor’s eyes unless he looked to- 
ward it from the centre of the room or beyond; nor be reflected 
into them excepting from the upper part of large pictures and 
cases against the opposite wall. Sculpture, pictures of moder- 
ate size, and works of minor art will be well lighted both on this 
and the window wall, where the milder light would still suffice 
for eyes undazzled by the window above. On the end walls of 
the room works of art of any kind or size would show to better 
advantage than in any part of a top-lighted gallery. The light 
would fall at an angle approaching forty-five degrees both with 
the perpendicular and with the line of vision of the spectator, 
—the general direction called by Leonardo the best for all 
objects.! Further, instead of the even mediocrity of illumina- 


1 Leonardo da Vinci, Libro della Pittura. 
Cap. 85. In drawing from nature “‘the height of the light should be such that 
objects will cast shadows equal to their height.”” (Forty-five degrees in elevation.) 
Cap. 415. “Where should one stand to look at a picture? Assuming that AB 
is the picture, the light coming from D; I say that a person 
placing himself between C and E will grasp it very badly, 3 A 
and especially if it is an oil painting or varnished to have 
some lustre like a mirror. It will be less visible on thisac- ¢ D 
count the nearer the eye approaches C, where the rays are =z 
reflected coming from the window. If a person places him- 
self between E and D, he will see the picture well, and the better the nearer 
he is to D, because this position shares less in reflected rays.” (Forty-five 
degrees or less with the line of vision of the spectator.) 


430 APPENDIX 


tion afforded by top light, the end, window, and opposite walls 
of a high side-lighted gallery would each have its individual 
lighting. Gradations of prominence in installation, which the 
contents of most galleries call for, would be possible. The interior 
porticoes of the Naples Museum, now walled up as galleries of 
sculpture, instance the agreeable and favorable effect of very 
high side lighting; but in most side-lighted galleries, new and 
old, the windows run well into the lower half of the wall and, 
unless curtained, leave the visitor no eyes for anything else. 

Information about exhibits in museums is chiefly given in the 
form of inscriptions affixed to them, or labels. Two facts about 
museum labels indicate the limitations of their use. First, a 
placard affixed to a work of art, while it may be an aid to igno- 
rance, may also be a hindrance to the enjoyment of the work by 
one who comes prepared. Second, the information given on 
labels is apt not to be germane to the artistic content of the 
object labelled. Some form of printed information is called for 
which shall neither stand in the way of the spectator when in- 
structed, nor lead the thoughts of the uninstructed away from 
the work. The rigid subordination of labels and the exclusion 
therefrom of irrelevant information is an essential factor in 
training the visitor to study the objects themselves — the pur- 
pose for which a museum 1s established. 

The problem of the form of labels offers no difficulty in the 
case of pictures and sculptures, where the frame and the pedestal 
provide appropriate places, at once connected and subordinate, 
for an inscription. In the National Gallery and elsewhere in 
England the names of artist and subject are painted along the 
frame below and immediately next the canvas, and upon occa- 
sion the source on the corresponding upper margin. It is partic- 
ularly desirable that the names of givers or lenders should 
have, as by this practice, a separate place from the label proper. 
This both emphasizes such data and enables the visitor to ig- 
nore them if he choose. At the National Gallery one always 
knows where to look for both kinds of information, and neither 
is noticeable at the ordinary distance of seeing, although a step 
makes the words legible. The pedestals of sculptures are open 
to labelling in a way equally orderly and no less inconspicuous 
and effective. 

The real physical difficulties of labelling begin with the minor 
arts. It is in the first place admittedly impracticable in a col- 


Cap. 104. “On the quality of illumination.” ‘A large volume of high light 
not too brilliant is that which renders the details of objects most pleasing.” 


APPENDIX 431 


lection of smaller things to give a label to every object needing 
one. The application of a separate inscription to every individ- 
ual exhibit whose proper comprehension will be impossible to 
most people without special information is in many cases com- 
pletely destructive of the effect of all as works of art.! For 
the most part the attempt is abandoned in European muse- 
ums, many of the richest exhibits of textiles, metal-work and 
woodwork containing only an occasional label. The problem, 
as at present conceived, must and evidently does present insu- 
perable difficulties. It is time to attack it at some other angle. 
Commercial show windows enforce a similar lesson. The cheap 
and mean appearance of the shops on Regent Street, Bond 
Street, and Piccadilly compared with those on the Rue de la 
Paix or Fifth Avenue is due in great measure to the immoder- 
ate labelling of objects in London, not only with prices but with 
other information, and their scanty placarding in Paris and New 
York. The profusion of printed cards is convenient but also 
unmannerly. The shops of the chief dealers in works of art are 
a marked exception, and museums should heed this testimony 
of business experience combined with good taste. 

In the second place, a label on any small object is necessarily 
either obtrusive or difficult to read. Common practice inclines 
to the latter fault, with the result that if the visitor to exhibits of 
minor art exerts himself to read labels, he is soon too fatigued in 
body and eyes to observe the objects adequately. My notebooks 
of last summer often contain the remark: “ Labels illegible.” 

The problem of composing labels is a difficult one for the 
major and minor arts alike. Printed information on objects 
which shall answer the uninformed spectator’s chief questions 
without uselessly occupying his thoughts or forcing them into 
other than artistic channels is still in the main a desideratum 
of museum economy. As commonly composed for pictures, 
labels act perceptibly to lower the élan with which the eyes 
search the canvas for new conceptions and for points of attach- 
ment in memory, interposing a rush of abstract historical ideas 
and even indifferent registration data between the visitor’s per- 
ception and the artist’s intention. It is especially undesirable 
that they should be filled as they frequently are in Europe with 
* 1 Jn the Tokio Museum the little collection of netsuke consists principally, 
for the eye, of white labels which tell in two languages and under many pre- 
scribed heads very little and mostly the self-evident; while the miniature sculp- 
tures, often of the most fascinating kind, almost disappear in comparison.” 


Curt Glaser, Ostasiatische Kunstmuseen, Museumskunde, vol. vu, 3 (1912), 
p. 148. 


432 APPENDIX 


self-evident information. To be halted in the inspection of a 
landscape to learn that it represents “Cottage with Covered 
Haystack by a River,” “Forest Scene,” “‘View over a Flat, 
Wooded Country” (one of many sequences noted) is to have 
one’s vision remanded to nursery conditions. Again, in a col- 
lection of Eastern art the first half of the label, “‘Reliures Orien- 
tales xvi—-xvu Siécles” unnecessarily occupies the visitor’s 
mind and eyes. The objects are patently book-bindings and 
the collection wholly oriental. In another collection an object 
is carefully labelled “Small Bronze Horse’’; the facts that it is 
small, of bronze, and a horse being already plain. An important 
indirect advantage of a label is that it provides a name by which 
to call a work of art. This advantage is missed when the name is 
such as could be invented forthwith by any one who remembered 
the object at all. 

For objects of minor art there seems no alternative generally 
applicable, owing to the two physical difficulties just mentioned, 
other than to employ collective labels giving a general descrip- 
tion of a whole class of exhibits. Such signs could be composed 
to answer the essential questions of visitors; and a legible num- 
ber, which it is always possible to affix to any object however 
small, might refer to a list or catalogue which should be duly ad- 
vertised and made accessible. As matters now stand, the visi- 
tor looking through an exhibit of minor art for what may chance . 
to interest him is often, perhaps generally, disappointed when 
he seeks a label on the object of his choice. Such collective 
signs, unobtrusively placed high on a wall or on the frame of a 
case, are not infrequent at present in European museums and 
were to me always welcome. But because their use is not made 
~ a system, they still betray the prevailing vice of labels — that 
of getting themselves forgotten and becoming out of date. In 
one important new gallery, immediately under the sign “In- 
dian and Persian Cashmeres” the principal one of three objects 
was labelled “Mortlake Tapestry, England, 18th century.” 
What was the uninstructed visitor to think? 

A collective label applied to the contents of a whole gallery 
becomes the designation of the room. Such gallery names are 
frequently found both on the Continent and in England, and 
one inclines to recommend their invariable use. They are often 
inscribed high on the wall, but for purposes of experiment might 
be painted on boards. If the design and lettering of such boards 
were carefully chosen and given a certain uniformity throughout 
a museum, they might become a permanent form of gallery 


APPENDIX 433 


sign, adapted to changing exhibitions as well. The upper part 
of a gallery wall is nearly always vacant, and offers for every 
form of exhibit a place analogous to that afforded for individual 
pictures and statues by the frame and pedestal. To such a posi- 
tion, connected and yet subordinate, printed information about 
museum objects should always be relegated. Placed high on 
a wall, the visitor already informed ignores it without effort, and 
the uninformed obtains it by only raising his eyes. This habit 
is quickly acquired when the device is found everywhere. The 
systematic use of high wall signs would, I believe, go far to 
solve the problem of labels in museum galleries. 

Among other aids to visitors, plans of the building are dis- 
tributed about several English museums. In some cases they 
outline the department, and are hung on the jambs of doors like 
the doorway plans adopted at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bos- 
ton, but one misses the gold star which in our plans tells the 
visitor just where he is at the time. 

The opportunity to sit down occasionally may be said to 
double the productiveness of.a museum visit. Without it one 
is unable during the latter part of a visit extending over hours 
to give the proper attention to works of art, to say nothing of 
enjoying them, while, if time be taken for two or three short 
rests, the last hour may be as agreeable and profitable as the 
first. Seats should be used to forestall, not recover from fatigue, 
and should be so scattered as to make this possible everywhere 
in the museum. They are often provided abroad, and some- 
times in greater number than necessary. Even in galleries full 
of visitors and containing comparatively few seats, some were 
always to be found vacant. The long gallery of the Louvre was 
the only exception noted. The elaborate upholstered divans 
frequently provided in Europe, beside being unattractive, offer 
an unnecessary amount of ease. Plain chairs or benches are 
more common, and care is often taken to give them the same 
color as the other woodwork of the room. Chairs are arranged 
in groups along the centre of the gallery without apparently 
being much displaced. At the Brera they are of antique pat- 
tern in the form of a curving “X”’ and are very pleasing in 
effect. Chairs of such a design would be a harmonious note in 
any gallery of European art. In the Elgin Room at the Brit- 
ish Museum, plain oak benches are in no discord with the 
marbles about, and for purposes of forestalling fatigue are ample. — 

To the tourist from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the 
opportunity of personally meeting representatives of foreign 


A434 APPENDIX 


galleries, like that offered by our docent service and conferences, 
is conspicuous by its absence. Within the past two years guides 
at stated times make the rounds of departments of the British 
Museum and, to judge by a similar service in Canterbury and 
other cathedrals, render a real and great service to visitors. At 
the Musée Guimet the conferences announced were without 
exception devoted to subjects and not to objects. Yet it is 
objects that visitors to museums come to see, and would be 
glad to hear about. Standing at the threshold of the immense 
treasury of the Louvre, and conscious of one’s impotence to 
appropriate more than the merest crumbs of such a feast, noth- 
ing less than a perpetual series of conferences every hour and 
every day that the Museum was open seemed adequate to the 
requirements of its throngs of visitors. A corps of many men 
of culture and education would be needed, going far beyond the 
personnel of the Museum, and the larger the better. Instead 
of the works themselves, lantern reproductions and plaster casts 
might be used by the speakers for the purposes of comment in 
a lecture room, to be applied forthwith by the hearers to the 
originals in the galleries. In view of the start we have made in 
America at offering museum visitors the personal companion- 
ship of trained men, it seems not too much to anticipate that 
groups of scholars may before long be found everywhere 
combining in these ways to make the wealth of our museums 
the real property of contemporary society and a vital force in 
its life. 





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